Jack Black’s original character in the Minecraft movie leaves fans completely baffled

Before he went “method” as Steve, Jack Black was originally meant to play a much different character in A Minecraft Movie.

Minecraft is an unusual choice for a video game adaptation. Unlike Fallout and The Last of Us, it doesn’t have a single story driving the game – players make their own fun and build their way through their own adventures.

That’s why Mojang Studios has allowed director Jared Hess to get creative, and after more than a decade in development, A Minecraft Movie will finally arrive in cinemas in April.

It has a starry cast, including Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, and, most notably, Jack Black, who’s playing the game’s main character (aka the default skin) – but that wasn’t always the plan.

Jack Black was supposed to play a talking pig in A Minecraft Movie

Warner Bros/Mojang

Black will play Steve in A Minecraft Movie. However, for most of the project’s development, his character was a talking pig.

“His character was originally a talking pig, and it was very, very, very late in the development where we had the idea to switch it to become Steve, because we needed an expert and host,” Torfi Frans Ólafsson, Mojang’s senior director of original content, explained to Variety.

This does raise questions about the movie’s story. From the outset, we know it follows “four misfits” who end up trapped in the Overworld, where they meet Steve, an expert crafter who may be able to help them get back to reality.

Warner Bros. Pictures

How do you go from a talking pig to Black playing Steve, clearly a pivotal character in the film? Well, that’s what fans are asking, too.

“Feels like this movie went through some crazy ass development and script changes. Cause that’s such a huge f**king leap,” one user wrote. “Jack Black was meant to play a talking pig? The design logic behind this movie gets weirder by the day,” another commented.

“I really need a day-by-day account of the entire development of this Disaster Artist style,” a third joked, and a fourth wrote: “This is genuinely the dumbest thing ever why would they admit this?”

Jack Black went “method” as Steve in Minecraft

Ólafsson also stressed, “This is not my Steve or your Steve – this is Jack Black’s Steve.

“A lot of fans responded when they saw the first teasers and trailers, like, ‘Hey, wait a minute – this is just Jack Black. This isn’t Jack Black being someone else.’ And maybe it is, because this is literally him interpreting this character and what it means to him.”

During any downtime on the set, Black played Minecraft with the cast and crew, managing to log more than 100 hours by the end of the shoot.

“He was just completely manic, hoarding stuff in the mines, searching for lapis lazuli because he liked the way it sounds,” Ólafsson said. “He kept saying it: ‘Can I talk about lapis lazuli in the movie?’”

Speaking to IGN, Hess joked that Black went “as method as it gets… he was in his trailer anytime he had a break, he was just slaying it in the Overworld.”

“Torfi put together a special server just for the crew. Jack got obsessed with searching for lapis lazuli, as he calls it. I mean, every day, it was like, I’d pop in there to go over the scene in the morning and he would be dressed as Steve playing the game. It was kind of a surreal thing to behold,” he added.

Before it hits cinemas on April 4, find out more about the Young Sheldon and Minecraft movie sweepstakes and keep tabs on the year’s releases with our 2025 movie calendar.