Last year, Warner Bros. and Mojang, the studio and creator, respectively, behind the upcoming "Minecraft" film hit a snag when "Night at the Museum" and "Real Steel" helmer Shawn Levy, who was supposed to direct the film, abandoned the project.
Entertainment Weekly reports that Rob McElhenney, who rose to fame with "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" then stepped in to direct the film, which now has a release date. Mojang's Vu Bui took to their official website to announce the news that "Minecraft" will be released in 3D and IMAX on May 24, 2019. He wrote, "Yes, that might seem like a long time away, but it just so happens to be the right amount of time to make it completely awesome.
And we all want an awesome Minecraft movie, right?" He also promised to share information about the film as they create it. Earlier this year, "Minecraft" producer Roy Lee spoke to Collider to shed some light on the upcoming film, which at the time was still "in the scripting stages."
"Minecraft would be part of a multiverse where humans can enter that has the feel of what the live action version of a Minecraft experience," Lee said. He even explained that Mojang is working closely with production so that they "can give us insight into future updates so we can put things into the movie around the same time they relaunch newer versions of the game and at the same time, potentially taking ideas from the movie and putting them into the game." It makes sense that elements of new iterations of the game would be present in the film that is to be released three years from now--continuity is key in bringing a more realistic movie adaptation of a game.
Minecraft was originally developed by Markus "Notch" Persson and was published in 2011 for platforms Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and Microsoft Windows. The game had surpassed 1 million purchases within the month of its release and has spawned "Minecraft: Story Mode" and "Minecraft: Education Edition."