Minecraft Movie Delayed, Rob McElhenney Drops Out As Director

Warner Bros.’ upcoming film adaptation of Microsoft’s Minecraft has suffered a series of set backs, which include most notably a director change.

According to TheWrap, director and co-writer Rob McElhenney, has dropped out of the project, which apparently is no longer slated to arrive in May 2019.

In addition to a change at the helm, Warner Bros. has decided to scrap the previous script in a favor of a new one that will be written by the Nee Brothers, Adam and Aaron, who are best-known for 2006’s The Last Romantic and 2015’s Band of Robbers. The previous script was written by Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman) and McElhenney.

According to unnamed sources, these changes will delay the movie, which, as of two years ago, was previously scheduled to hit May 24, 2019. A new release date has not been provided.

It’s also unclear why Warner Bros. decided to can what McElhenney and his team had been working on, and why the director opted to drop out of the project, though the two are likely intimately related.

For those that don’t know: Minecraft was set to be McElhenney’s first credit as a director. The Philadelphia native is best-known for playing Mac in the FX/FXX comedy series It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Before it was acquired by Microsoft, Mojang began receiving offers from numerous Hollywood producers for both Minecraft TV shows and movies as early as 2012. However, it wasn’t until 2014 that Minecraft creator Markus Persson revealed Mojang was in talks with Warner Bros. over said movie. After getting the greenlit from Persson and co., work on the project began under Shawn Levy as director, who was eventually replaced with McElhenney. In other words, if you’re keeping count, this is the second director to drop out of the movie.

What’s also worth pointing out is that Minecraft doesn’t have the same type of market share or cultural relevance it did even a couple of years ago. In fact, someone should get Warner Bros. on the phone and let them know that there’s little thing called Fortnite that it could probably make a penny or two off of with a movie. Just an idea.