As we reported last week, Night at the Museum Director Shawn Levy left the Minecraft movie shortly after being asked to develop a concept for it. In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Levy explained he left the project after Mojang turned down his idea.
“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,” he 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.”
His vision was an adventure take that was not necessarily a comedy, but similar to the 1985 kids comedy-adventure movie The Goonies.
Since you might be in Minecraft’s target demo, let me explain. When your mom and dad were little kids they went to see the kid versions of Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin), the guy that played Jonah Hex and voiced Thanos in Guardians of the Galaxy (Josh Brolin), and Corey Feldman (before he was sad) go on a rollicking treasure-hunting adventure. There was a pirate ship, a differently-abled person, some fat-shaming and some stereotypical gangsters in the mix, but it all worked out in the end.
Perhaps it was the fact that he chose to model his vision on a film that will have its 30th-birthday before the Minecraft movie comes out, but Mojang was not willing to sign on to Levy’s idea. At any rate, Levy doesn’t seem to hold any animosity to Mojang for rejecting his plan.
“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.”
[Source: GameSpot]
You must be logged in to post a comment Login