It took over a decade of development, but a Minecraft movie is in theaters — and it’s breaking box office records. For starters, A Minecraft Movie had the highest opening weekend at the domestic box office ($163 million) for any video game movie ever. It’s also No. 1 among films released in 2025, and stars Jack Black and Jason Momoa’s biggest domestic opening, as well.
A Minecraft Movie shattered all projections, but maybe it shouldn’t have: Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all-time, with a reported 350 million copies sold. That’s a lot of chicken jockeys. But give credit to director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre), along with a huge team of screenwriters, for figuring out a formula that worked. He wasn’t the film’s original director, however. The job initially went to Rob McElhenney, who also worked on the script. Yup, Mac from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
Back in 2015, Minecraft publisher Mojang AB announced, “Hello there! Some of you may have seen this guy hanging around MINECON in London a couple weeks ago. He’s Rob McElhenney, and he’s going to be directing the upcoming Minecraft movie.” The film was supposedly going to be animated and star Steve Carell. So, what happened? Why is McElhenney nowhere to be found in the A Minecraft Movie credits?
Why Didn’t It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia Star Rob McElhenney Direct A Minecraft Movie?
“I’m comfortable talking about it, because f*k them at this point,” McElhenney said in a 2020 episode of the HappySadConfused podcast, according to GameSpot. What drew him to Minecraft was the lack of a “fixed narrative. It was an open world experience. All you were essentially give was the building blocks to do whatever you want. I thought, what an amazing tool, much like Legos except now you’re talking about infinite possibilities because it’s digital, to give to kids — and not just kids, but any person who feels powerless.”
Warner Bros. loved McElhenney’s concept for the movie being about “people taking agency over their experience in this digital landscape,” and he was given a $150 million budget. However, in 2016, Warner Bros. movie chief Greg Silverman left the studio and was replaced by Toby Emmerich. That’s when McElhenney’s Minecraft movie “slowly died on the vine,” he explained. “I don’t harbor any resentment. I get it. I get the way that it works.”
Luckily, McElhenney is doing just fine.
