Recently, ‘Night at The Museum’ director Shawn Levy dropped out of directing duties for Warner Bros.’ upcoming ‘Minecraft’ movie. When asked during an interview with the Wall Street Journal about what happened, Levy was able to explain a little bit about what went down.
“I feel like I’ve let the children of America down,” Levy said. “What happened simply is Warner’s asked me to develop, ‘How might this ever be a story for a movie?’ 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. And they’re like, ‘That doesn’t sound like what we want. If we’re going to see a movie get made, we don’t know what we want, but that doesn’t feel right.’ And I said, ‘OK, well that’s a movie I can envision.'”
“So I’m not sure what happens next, but I’ve got like four other movies that I’m considering for next year,” Levy added. “It felt like OK, I took a shot there, it wasn’t the right fit, narratively, and so I have to focus on the other ones.”
But what was Levy going for exactly? Apparently, the kind of movie he had in mind for ‘Minecraft’ would have been more along the lines of 1985’s ‘Goonies.’
“It was not a comedy. It had a bit of a ‘Goonies’ flair,” he explained. “I’m not even allowed to speak of it as much as I have. But 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.”
However, Levy made it clear he did not want to push his vision if the developers were not keen on approving it, especially with the stigma that videogame movies tend to have.
“But it’s not my game; they know what they’re doing,” Levy said. “The truth is there is a long history of trying to make great movies out of games, and they’re rarely done well. Mojang is still figuring out what they want. We gave it a shot and it wasn’t the right fit, so, these things happen.”
With a title like ‘Minecraft’, which features absolutely no narrative, it’s understandable how creating a film based off of it would certainly be a challenge for any director. Put that alongside ‘Minecraft’s’ immense popularity and fan base, and it seems clear why both ends of the production are likely to be under a lot of pressure to try to create an adaptation that suits the spirit of the game in accordance to Mojang’s tastes.
As of writing, the ‘Minecraft’ still does not does not have a new director to helm the project, nor does it have a proposed release date just yet.
Source: Wall Street Journal
