Rough news, Minecraft fans. The big-screen adaptation of the hugely popular video game has hit another roadblock, withRob McElhenneydropping out as director, most likely pushing back the expected May 2019 release date.
“No, that is not happening,” theIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphiastar toldThe Wrap, which doesn’t really leave much room for debate, does it?
Warner Bros. is apparently reassembling the entire project with McElhenney’s departure, bringing on theNee Brothers(The Last Romantic) to pen an entirely new script.Wonder WomanwriterJason Fuchshad previously taken a crack at the franchise along with McElhenney.
If you’re unfamiliar with Minecraft, it’s basically a virtual world-builder, in which players use blocky, Lego-like cubes to create whatever communities and structures their imagination allows. If you’re thinking that doesn’t exactly lend itself to a feature-length story, you are almost certainly correct. But the game ismassivelypopular, boasting about 100 million users worldwide. As we know from such unfortunate situations as theAlf Reboot Debacle™, there isn’t much Hollywoodwon’ttry and adapt if it has that sweet, delicious IP.
If nothing else, producerRoy Lee(The Lego Movie) hassaidsome promising things in the past regarding the game’s developer, Mojang, being involved in the project:
“The company, Mojang, is very involved in the development. So they know everything is going to be in the movie that 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. So I don’t know exactly what things are going into the game, but they know exactly what’s going into the movie."
On theotherhand, that was back in 2016, back when the adaptation had a bit better of a foundation to stand on. As far as we know,Steve Carellis stillattached to star, but with a complete rewrite of the script, even that is big ol' shruggy shoulders.
