Mojang rejected plans for a ‘Goonies-style’ Minecraft movie, says director

The director Warner Bros. brought on to work on a Minecraft film has left the project, after Mojang shot down his idea for the film, which he called an adventure reminiscent of 1985’s The Goonies.

“How might this ever be a story for a movie?” Shawn Levy, director of Night at the Museum, explained rhetorically to The Wall Street Journal. “Because it’s not a narrative game. And we came up with an approach that felt good to us, and I discussed it with Mojang.”

He told the Journal that his idea wasn’t necessarily a comedy but “It had a bit of a Goonies flair. ... It was an adventure movie, and I thought it could have been a lot of fun and fulfilled a lot of the qualities that people love about the game.”

Mojang didn’t see it that way, Levy said.

“And they’re like, ‘That doesn’t sound like what we want,’” Levy continued. “If we’re going to see a movie get made, we don’t know what we want, but that doesn’t feel right.”

So Levy moved on, saying he had four other movies to consider for the coming year. “The truth is there is a long history of trying to make great movies out of games, and they’re rarely done well,” Levy said. “Mojang is still figuring out what they want. We gave it a shot and it wasn’t the right fit, so, these things happen.”