When filmmaker Jared Hess got interested in making a movie based on the open-ended video game “Minecraft,” there was a major stumbling block: “There’s no story to the game.” “Everybody that plays it brings their own unique story and narrative when they play it,” Hess said in a phone interview. “Like, my daughter, when she plays, she has a really complex story about this hotel for wolves that she built.
So it presented a fun opportunity to create this epic, ridiculous quest movie with a bunch of unlikely heroes.” Hess is now set to unleash “A Minecraft Movie” onto the world, with the U.S.
release date this Friday. It’s the first big-budget franchise movie for Hess, a Brigham Young University alum and Salt Lake City resident best known for small independent films — notably, his 2004 debut, “Napoleon Dynamite.” (Warner Bros.
Pictures) Henry (Sebastian Hansen) discovers how things work in the Overworld, in a scene from "A Minecraft Movie." Making “A Minecraft Movie” has been a five-year journey, through a pandemic, an actors’ strike, and more than a year living in New Zealand — where Hess shot the movie and then worked with Weta FX, the digital effects company that brought the movie’s block-shaped creations to life. It’s also been a challenge to take Mojang Studios’ property, the best-selling video game of all time — the first to top 300 million copies sold — and turn it into a film that will satisfy the game’s fans and newcomers .
