Crafting a Blockbuster: How ‘A Minecraft Movie’ Brought the Wacky, Cubic Video Game to Life

variety.com:

Microsoft are mining for box office gold with a different kind of game-to-film adaptation: “A Minecraft Movie.” For the uninitiated, the Microsoft-owned “Minecraft” is a sandbox game that drops players into the Overworld, a whimsical dimension made up of blocky voxels that look like boxes.

There’s no storyline or single way to play: Users can make objects, build structures, fight enemy mobs, befriend animals and explore the islands crafted by other players.

Picture Legos in a world with infinite possibilities. The game allows each player to steer characters and craft storylines all on their own — that’s a big part of the appeal of this type of highly customizable gameplay.

So when it comes to adapting “Minecraft” for the big screen, it means that every fan of the game will walk into the theater with a markedly different vision of what to expect. “We’re calling it ‘A Minecraft Movie’ because we’re respecting the fact that there’s no one story that drives the game,” says Mary Parent, chairman of worldwide production for Legendary. “We’re not the official story,” adds director Jared Hess. “We’re not canonizing anything.