A Minecraft Movie Was Influenced By A Beloved Sci-Fi Franchise

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Though they may not seem as though they have any similarities on the surface, "Minecraft" and "Star Wars" do share at least some common DNA. Specifically, a former Lucasfilm employee who helped shape a galaxy far, far away for more than a decade made the jump to Mojang Studios to help build out the franchise based on the popular brick-building sandbox video game.

In Andrew Farago's behind-the-scenes book "A Minecraft Movie: From Brick to Big Screen," VP of Minecraft franchise development Kayleen Walters discussed how her work in the "Star Wars" galaxy ended up influencing the direction of this year's blockbuster movie. "Before I took this job, I was at Lucasfilm for 13 years, working on 'Star Wars,' as part of that team," Walters explained. "When I was recruited for this role, I knew of Minecraft, but I wasn't a Minecraft player."

Warner Bros. had been developing "A Minecraft Movie" for years, with several failed versions abandoned along the way. But Walters, long before director Jared Hess' version made it across the finish line, helped figure out how the world of "Minecraft" could be expanded beyond the game itself. Here's how she explained it in the book:

"Early on, I went to Stockholm and spent time with the team at Mojang and spent time discussing the origins of Minecraft and what was important to them and the brand, the brand perspective, what the values were and the importance of the community, and how to embrace the community as such as a pat of the brand as well. How far we can take the brand in certain directions, and when does it break? How can we try things that are different? What are the parameters were can put in place to try something different?"

"'Star Wars' was different, because they had years more time under their belt, and years more thought around the canon and the timeline and how everything fit in," Walters further explained. "Since there's so much rich narrative around 'Star Wars,' so many more assets."

Indeed, the "Star Wars" franchise canon is all-encompassing at this point, consisting of a dozen movies, several TV shows, books, video games, and more. "Minecraft" started as a video game and has since expanded. Conceptually, they are very different, but there's similarity between these two properties in that maintaining the core principles of the franchise's beginnings, and staying true to fan expectations, is paramount.

"I actually had a lot of experience from Star Wars that I was able to bring to Mojang," Walters said. "How you handle a brand, how you set up for that scale, how do you think about what's authentic to the brand so that you can branch out and do things like this movie or the Netflix series or the experiences that we're doing?"

In the case of "Minecraft," a core element is that no player's experience is the same. It's an endless sandbox. That's why the title "A Minecraft Movie" is deceptively important. It's not the "Minecraft" movie. Speaking further, Walters revealed key questions they needed to ask before branching out into the world of feature films.

"Who is it for? What is the brand and what is authentically Minecraft? What a creeper is, what the mechanics are, what the lore is behind the creeper, even if we're not sharing any of that. How much of that do we need to know internally so that we can put that into our story? I think that I brought a lot of what 'Star Wars' had done to help think about how we grow Minecraft without losing the essential identity of Minecraft."

All of this careful consideration worked out rather well. "A Minecraft Movie" is one of the biggest box office hits of 2025, with a sequel set up by the first movie, one that Warner Bros. will surely waste no time making. It may not be comparable to a galaxy yet, but this franchise is poised to grow well beyond the game now, with "Star Wars" quietly acting as a guide. 

You can pre-order "A Minecraft Movie" on 4K, Blu-ray, or DVD from Amazon.