Perhaps Minecraft players should start building pixelated movie theaters, since that's where the popular video game is headed. According to Deadline, Warner Bros. has acquired the film rights from Swedish developer Mojang AB.
The studio plans to develop a live-action version of the celebrated massively online, open-world building game, though no further details have been revealed.
Jill Messick of Mean Girls fame is set to produce, alongside Vertigo Entertainment's Roy Lee—the latter an unsurprising choice amid the success of his animated hit The Lego Movie, which has already been commissioned for a sequel.
Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson confirmed the partnership in a Thursday afternoon tweet.
Someone is trying leak the fact that we're working with Warner Brothers on a potential Minecraft Movie. I wanted to be the leak!
— Markus Persson (@notch) February 27, 2014"It's for real," Persson later told Polygon. "I think every part of that tweet was real, including me wanting to be the one to spill the news about a potential movie."
The game developer did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment.
This announcement comes days after Persson forced the shutdown of a crowd-funded Minecraft movie. Titled "The Birth of Man," the film would "tell an epic fantasy story that would stand alone on its own merit and set that story in the world of Minecraft," according to the venture's Kickstarter page.
Before it was canceled, the project had raised almost $64,000 from more than 1,000 backers.
An early version of Minecraft launched in 2009, more than two years before the full game reached the public. In the two years since, the massively popular title has surpassed 100 million registered users.
For more, see PCMag's review of Minecraft version 1.6.
Warner Bros. has also been rumored to be planning a film about security software pioneer John McAfee, who occasionally makes headlines these days for his incendiary comments and off-color antics, and who returned to the U.S. after fleeing a murder charge in his former home of Belize.
Check out PCMag Live in the video below, which discusses the possible Minecraft movie.