Jack Black stars in A Minecraft Movie as Steve, but he wasn’t originally going to play that part. Mojang senior director of original content, Torfi Frans Olafsson, said in an interview that Black was initially signed up to play a talking pig.
“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,” Olafsson told Variety. “This is not my Steve or your Steve–this is Jack Black’s Steve.”
Olafsson said a major piece of feedback that Mojang received after the first teasers came out was, “‘Hey, wait a minute–this is just Jack Black.'” And indeed, that was the aim. “Maybe it is, because this is literally him interpreting this character and what it means to him,” Olafsson said.
Steve in A Minecraft Movie is an “expert crafter” who helps the heroes along their journey to get back home. It’s just the latest video game role for Black, as he also played Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie and voiced Claptrap in Borderlands. He’s appeared in many video games as well, perhaps most famously voicing Eddie Riggs in Double Fine’s Brutal Legend.
Also in the interview, Olafsson said he obtained Xbox consoles for the cast and crew of A Minecraft Movie, and Black emerged as the “most passionate” of the bunch, logging more than 100 hours of the game during production.
“He was just completely manic, hoarding stuff in the mines, searching for lapis lazuli because he liked the way it sounds,” Olafsson said. “He kept saying it: ‘Can I talk about lapis lazuli in the movie?'”
A Minecraft Movie releases in theaters on April 4, and it also stars Jason Momoa, Danielle Broks, Emma Myers, and Sebastian Hansen. It’s directed by Napoleon Dynamite’s Jared Hess.
In other news, McDonald’s has announced its own A Minecraft Movie meal.
