‘Minecraft’ film gets 2019 release date

Minecraft Logo. Screen Grab from Facebook/Minecraft

A “Minecraft”’ movie adaptation, based on the massively popular video game franchise, will be shown in cinemas on May 24, 2019, according to its game developer, Mojang.

In an official statement on Tuesday (Manila time), the Swedish video game company said the lengthy wait was  “the right amount of time to make it completely awesome.”

The plot of the Minecraft movie remains unclear, but the studio behind the film, Warner Bros, announced the hiring of Rob McEllhenney to replace  Shawn Levy as director.

The comedian, best known for his role as Mac in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” tweeted that he was excited to do something “strange and wonderful” with the film.

Hey @Mojang let’s do something strange and wonderful.

— Rob McElhenney (@RMcElhenney) July 21, 2015

Minecraft’s venture into the big screen is the latest in a line of projects based on video games with minimal narrative to be developed into a feature film. The Angry Birds movie, based on the mobile-native game in which you catapult disgruntled avians at pigs who’ve stolen their eggs, skyrocketed at the US box office in May.

Meanwhile, Minecraft is a procedurally generated sandbox game in which players harvest elements from the world during daytime, to build tools and shelter to protect themselves from zombie attack come nightfall.

The game’s success primarily stems from its interface that allows players to build pretty much anything that comes to their minds.

Since its release in 2009, it has become the second-bestselling game of all time, only trailing the legendary brick-building game, Tetris.

Minecraft has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and has even been adopted as a teaching aid in US schools. Khristian Ibarrola