Kirsten Dunst has begun filming A Minecraft Movie 2 alongside Jack Black, which means Hollywood is making a sequel to a movie that hasn't been released yet.
Let me repeat that, because it's worth savoring in all its absurdity: they're filming a sequel to a movie that won't hit theaters until 2027. That's not confidence in the material. That's franchise capitalism in its purest, most shameless form.
The original Minecraft film - sorry, A Minecraft Movie, because apparently articles are part of branding now - stars Jack Black in what appears to be his contractual obligation to appear in every video game adaptation Hollywood produces. The film is directed by Jared Hess, who made Napoleon Dynamite twenty years ago and has been dining out on it ever since.
Now Kirsten Dunst, a genuinely great actress who's been in actual good movies like Melancholia and The Power of the Dog, is joining the sequel. This is either a brilliant paycheck move or a sign that the mid-budget drama has died so completely that even Oscar nominees are doing video game movies.
Hollywood's logic here is simple: Minecraft has 300 million players worldwide. Even if 1% of them buy tickets, that's $300 million at the box office. The movie doesn't have to be good. It just has to exist.
We've reached the point where studios are greenlighting entire franchises based purely on IP recognition. The Super Mario Bros. Movie made $1.36 billion, so now every video game property gets a cinematic universe. Sonic got three movies. Uncharted made $400 million. The Last of Us won Emmys.
Video game adaptations are the new comic book movies, except worse, because at least comic books have plots. Minecraft is literally just blocks. The story is whatever you build. So the screenplay for this movie is someone's fever dream about what narrative structure you could impose on a sandbox game.
But sure, make two of them. Why not? Kirsten Dunst probably has a mortgage.
In Hollywood, nobody knows anything - except that IP recognition is worth more than original ideas, and franchises are safer than creativity.
