Update: Minecraft Fan Film Wants $600,000 From Kickstarter

StewShearerOld

Geekdad News Writer
Jan 5, 2013
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Update: Minecraft Fan Film Wants $600,000 From Kickstarter

[kickstarter=878782324/birth-of-man-a-minecraft-feature-film]

Filmmaker Brandon Laatsch is raising funds to produce a Minecraft movie that he hopes will impress fans and stay true to its roots.

Video game movies tend to suck. It's not that they're all abjectly horrible, it's more that the people making them just don't seem to get the source material. A PG-13 Mortal Kombat, for instance, can still be fun but it's doomed by default to miss the point of the games. That said, there are some who still believe in the idea of a great video game film. Brandon Laatsch is one of them and he intends to make it.

The question that comes out of that, of course, is which game does he want to adapt? The short answer is Minecraft. "To me Minecraft is the perfect video game to adapt to a film," he said, in a video accompanying his Kickstarter. His reasoning is that without a set story or characters he and his team will be free to faithfully recreate the unique world of Minecraft without tripping over the toes of an established canon. "Our plan is to tell an epic fantasy story that would stand alone on its own merit and set that story in the world of Minecraft for its visual appeal and the unique physical rules within the world."

To make the film, which will be named Birth of Man, Laatsch and his team are seeking $600,000 in funds. While it's an arguably lofty goal, Laatsch would point out that it's significantly less than Hollywood fare which "typically [spends] 100 times this much on a VFX heavy epic." Whether that will be enough to convince backers to part with their money is something we'll have to wait and see. That said, it's very much possible that Minecraft's popularity might be enough on its own to help the campaign reach its goal. Case in point, Nearly 800 backers have already given more than $54,000 to the campaign. With 29 days left to go there's still plenty of time to raise to the rest.

Update: The Kickstarter for Birth of Man has apparently been cancelled by its creator. While we've reached out to the project for a comment, it'd be fair to say, based on <a href=https://twitter.com/notch/status/431795020082216960>recent Tweets, that Minecraft's makers didn't tale too kindly to the film going forward without permission.

Source: <a href=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/878782324/birth-of-man-a-minecraft-feature-film>Kickstarter


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Redlin5_v1legacy

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Aug 5, 2009
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There is so little canon in Minecraft to begin with that... Yeah. Free game.

Not something I would back or even really be eager to watch though. Naturally that means it'll be made and people will laud it until I see it! :D
 

Moontouched-Moogle

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Nov 17, 2009
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StewShearer said:
The question that comes out of that, of course, is which game does he want to adapt? The short answer is Minecraft. "To me Minecraft is the perfect video game to adapt to a film," he said, in a video accompanying his Kickstarter. His reasoning is that without a set story or characters he and his team will be free to faithfully recreate the unique world of Minecraft without tripping over the toes of an established canon. "Our plan is to tell an epic fantasy story that would stand alone on its own merit and set that story in the world of Minecraft for its visual appeal and the unique physical rules within the world."
This reads more like "We have an idea for our own movie, but we decided to set it in Minecraft because that's popular and will get us lots of attention and money without us having to worry about properly adapting anything."

Color me cynical.
 

NezumiiroKitsune

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Mar 29, 2008
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It's worth pointing out, most of the money has been raised off the back of high reward tiers, with the top tier being set at a lofty $10,000, selling 3 out of it's 5 spots, and the second to last tier, set at $5,000, selling out. So support so far has been very very strong.

If it elicits this sort of excitement in people with pockets not as deep as the nether, then we'll be seeing this funded before the time is half out.

Personally... I'm iffy about the whole thing, but he seems to believe in the project. It might be worth a $10 investment. Even a bad Minecraft film will be good for a chuckle. If it's good, it can serve as an example to the film industry of how to create films out of videogame source material.

Sorry if this reads weirdly, I'm very tired.
 

rasputin0009

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Feb 12, 2013
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Shitty FX works great within the Minecraft world, actually. Seems cool to me, but not cool enough for me throw a couple bucks at it.
 

FPLOON

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Jul 10, 2013
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Uh... Wouldn't this work better as an animated movie? Don't get me wrong, but "live-action with special FX" seems more "human" than what Minecraft is known for... (Maybe it's just me this time...)

Other than that... good luck, I guess?
 

Stavros Dimou

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Mar 15, 2011
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i only saw a guy running in the trailer.
where is the survival and crafting parts of this movie ?
 

freaper

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Apr 3, 2010
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Brandon, of FreddieW fame, is a really swell guy, and I hope they get to realise this movie. His work is usually top-notch so people backing this won't be disappointed.
 

frobalt

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NezumiiroKitsune said:
It's worth pointing out, most of the money has been raised off the back of high reward tiers, with the top tier being set at a lofty $10,000, selling 3 out of it's 5 spots, and the second to last tier, set at $5,000, selling out. So support so far has been very very strong.

If it elicits this sort of excitement in people with pockets not as deep as the nether, then we'll be seeing this funded before the time is half out.

Personally... I'm iffy about the whole thing, but he seems to believe in the project. It might be worth a $10 investment. Even a bad Minecraft film will be good for a chuckle. If it's good, it can serve as an example to the film industry of how to create films out of videogame source material.

Sorry if this reads weirdly, I'm very tired.
I don't think you're reading the page properly.

At the time of writing this, 2 people have pledged 10k, with 0 people pledging 5k. It seems you're looking at how many of that tier reward are left and confusing it with how many have been sold.

Still, 2 people already pledging 10k each is pretty impressive!
 

Grimh

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Feb 11, 2009
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A Minecraft movie sounds absolutely awful, but I wish him luck.

We'll see if people actually want this I guess.
 

ClockworkUniverse

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NezumiiroKitsune said:
It's worth pointing out, most of the money has been raised off the back of high reward tiers, with the top tier being set at a lofty $10,000, selling 3 out of it's 5 spots, and the second to last tier, set at $5,000, selling out. So support so far has been very very strong.
When I see that, I don't think "support." I think "they self-pledged to make it look like they had support."

Also, do they actually have the rights for this? Because if not, that's kind of a problem.

Overall, this is incredibly sketchy, and I would suggest that this project offers a higher risk than most Kickstarters of the creator taking the money and running.
 

Glaice

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Mar 18, 2013
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This looks and sounds ridiculous, nope I wouldn't support this even tho I fire up Minecraft every once in a while.

Also, what's the plot? Random adventuring? Minecraft itself has no plot so how would you make a full length film out of a game that has none?
 

Ruisu

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Jul 11, 2013
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I think a perfect minecraft movie would be a "survival" or "lonely conteplation" movie at most, than have some One Man Civilization emerge, with Steve bulding a whole city for himself since he is incapable of communicatting with anything else in the world, and so on. We would need at least 2 movies too, since the single player experience of minecraft is so diverse, and we need retellings of the story of Steve interacting with the world.

And it should be 100% huge pixels, including the protagonist, or 100% live action with realistic CGI, no cubes at all, but still minecraft physics (Like steve lost, proceding to build a huge monolith of dirt or sand or something to guide himself).

Minecraft can be made in to all sorts of movies, but the "Real man inside a pixelated game" is the most boring of all the choices you could make.
Unless you're trying to make your movie out of a Minecraft Let's Play. Then it would fit. But still boring.


edit:

Okay, so boring may be an overstatement for the movie they are trying to make. Is just that I have this idea that making a movie with Minecraft visuals, but using real people, has this youtube short feel (and I know it will be an youtube movie) that while it is fun for their personal projects (people like FreddieW and Corridor Digital), it just makes me feel a bit frustated in thinking this is what will be considered to be THE minecraft movie.

I don't know how to explain this any better. I don't hate the idea, is just not what I personally would do for a movie based off minecraft.
I am of course mostly talking about visual style here, the comedic approach can surely work for the plot, and I could enjoy it still.
 

martyrdrebel27

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Feb 16, 2009
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Fundraising was cancelled an hour ago, check the link. It sucks, I was hoping to pith my minecraft short story as a plot.
 

Flatfrog

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Dec 29, 2010
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This is why fans shouldn't make movies. This looks truly like a truly terrible piece of fan-wank. A very clever visual concept, but the idea of setting an actual story in that universe is ridiculous.

I can easily imagine a great Minecraft movie which takes the idea of the person trying to survive in the world of creepers and zombies by crafting and living by his wits, but this trailer makes me think of Tetris the Movie.


When he took the sword from the wall I died a little inside at how stupid it was.
 

Denamic

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Aug 19, 2009
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I'm not sure why they would not even ask for permission to use the Minecraft IP before they started a half million dollar project. It seemed incredibly sketchy.
 

omega 616

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May 1, 2009
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Oh come the fuck on now ...

Slap minecraft on something and tah dah, instant money!

Dungeons and dragons is basically "tell the story you want/epic adventures" and them movies suck ass, this is just leeching off minecraft to generate a little cash ... knowing how much Notch loves to rub himself up against the internet, like a purring cat, he will allow it.

"Our plan is to tell an epic fantasy story that would stand alone on its own merit and set that story in the world of Minecraft for its visual appeal and the unique physical rules within the world."
and the unique physical rules within the world? Is your main protagonist going to punch trees to knock them down? Slap a saddle on a pig?

EDIT: it seems a previous guy was right, funding was cut but I will leave my post as a hypothetical film.
 

K12

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ClockworkUniverse said:
NezumiiroKitsune said:
It's worth pointing out, most of the money has been raised off the back of high reward tiers, with the top tier being set at a lofty $10,000, selling 3 out of it's 5 spots, and the second to last tier, set at $5,000, selling out. So support so far has been very very strong.
When I see that, I don't think "support." I think "they self-pledged to make it look like they had support."

Also, do they actually have the rights for this? Because if not, that's kind of a problem.

Overall, this is incredibly sketchy, and I would suggest that this project offers a higher risk than most Kickstarters of the creator taking the money and running.
Not only do they not have the rights they apparently haven't even contacted Mojang about it.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/1x70f1/birth_of_man_a_minecraft_film/cf9c1ze

The fact that this basically looks like tagging superficial elements from something popular on to a completely unrelated story means it is very likely to have a copyright claim destroy it before it starts. I can't imagine that this could be good, it just looks like a random story with silly references.

So yeah this seems a bit dodgy to me, first off you're totally right about the self-pledging at high tiers. I remember that the Day one Garry's Incident kickstarter had a 10,000 donation by the CEO of the developing company. That's just bullshit hype manufacture.

Not optimistic in any way but I'd love to be proved wrong.