A Minecraft Movie's Title Has A Surprisingly Important Meaning

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If there is one surprise that movies have offered up in 2025 thus far, it's the astronomical success of "A Minecraft Movie." The fact that it is far and away the biggest Hollywood release of the year thus far is shocking ... unless you're a kid who was raised on the game. The only thing that even comes close is the runaway success of Ryan Coogler's "Sinners." But in terms of sheer size? It's hard to argue against this video game turned blockbuster.

The movie is based on the video game "Minecraft," an unassuming brick-building game that became the most popular game in history. So, why didn't Warner Bros. and director Jared Hess just call the movie "Minecraft," instead opting to go with "A Minecraft Movie?" There's a very good reason for that, it turns out. As explained in author Andrew Farago's behind-the-scenes book "A Minecraft Movie: From Brick to Big Screen," that title was very deliberate.

In the book, Jens Bergensten, the lead game designer of "Minecraft," explained his approach to building on the universe that had been established by creator Markus Persson and Mojang Studios. Building out that universe ended up influencing the way the movie unfolded. Per Bergensten:

"We did Story mode, we did Legends, we did Dungeons, and over time we learned that it's not so much about telling the Minecraft story, because there isn't one. There isn't a single one. Every player tells their own story, with the game they're playing. When we began thinking about it that way, it allowed us to take liberties with some of these things. We regard this as 'A Minecraft Movie' because it's a possible story. It's not The Minecraft Movie, and there might be other Minecraft stories in the future. That made it much easier to get the project rolling, actually."

The team was conscious of the idea that the game allows players to have a unique experience. It's not like the minor cinematic miracle that is "The LEGO Movie," where the title suggests a definitive tale. Rather, the "A" in the title posits that this is just one possible story in a much larger universe.

Warner Bros. had been developing different versions of "Minecraft" as a movie for a full decade. None of those versions made it to the finish line. While some of those might have also been interesting, it's hard to argue against the way things played out. The movie has resonated with fans in a big, big way. As of this writing, it has made well over $800 million at the box office. When all's said and done, it will be one of the biggest movies of the year overall. If it never made another dime, it would already be a resounding success.

The sheer magnitude of that success makes it clear that the movie did right by the majority of fans. Video game movies, for decades, didn't tend to work out because Hollywood had an odd tendency to ignore the source material. In the case of "Sonic the Hedgehog," now a $1 billion franchise in its own right, Paramount truly embraced the source material. That has also helped with TV shows like "The Last of Us" and "Fallout."

In the case of "Minecraft," the source material is an endless sandbox. There's no single story to tell. It's the definition of limitless. The title strongly hints at that idea, and that idea clearly worked like gangbusters. Producer Torfi Frans Ólafsson had this to say about it in the book:

"Because Minecraft is a sandbox game, it's open-ended, it has no linear narrative. It has some goals, like killing the Dragon or going into the Nether, but Minecraft is so many things to so many people. It's not possible to capture everyone's experience. And that's why we decided to go more specific, having one single story rather than try to explain the entire backstory of the world and how it came to be."

You can pre-order "A Minecraft Movie" on 4K, Blu-ray, or DVD on Amazon.