After years of casting rumours and speculation, we finally have our first official look at the live-action Minecraft movie — or 'A Minecraft Movie', to give it its official title — and it looks... well, about as horrifying as you'd think a live-action Minecraft movie would be.
Releasing in cinemas on 4th April 2025, the film sees a group of ordinary humans (played by Jason Mamoa, Sebastian Eugene Hansen, Emma Myres and Danielle Brooks) pulled into Mojang's blocky world thanks to a mysterious portal. There, they meet "expert crafter" Jack Black sorry, Steve, who will have to help them make their way home.
Here's the official plot description from the reveal trailer:
Welcome to the world of Minecraft, where creativity doesn’t just help you craft, it’s essential to one’s survival! Four misfits—Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Momoa), Henry (Hansen), Natalie (Myers) and Dawn (Brooks)—find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they’ll have to master this world (and protect it from evil things like Piglins and Zombies, too) while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, Steve (Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative…the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world.
Look, we don't know what exactly we were expecting from the live-action film, but today's trailer doesn't fill us with hope that it'll be something special. From the CG take on the Overworld, to the 'so, that just happened' dialogue (and don't even get us started on the warped Beatles track playing underneath it all), it all looks a little rough.
But hey, there's plenty of talent attached to this one (and Mamoa in a particularly fetching pink jacket). Directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) with Oscar-winning production designer Grant Major and VFX supervisor Dan Lemmon on board, it would be too early to completely write things off. Plus, Mark Mothersbaugh is on composing duties, so at least the score should give us something to tap along to.
We're going to need more trailers to bring us around on this one.