Jack Black Minecraft movie images leak, days after Tenacious D controversy
Video Games.
Images showing Jack Black as Minecraft character Steve have leaked online, giving the internet an early look at how the upcoming Warner Bros-backed Minecraft movie plans to stylise Mojang's blocky world.
The designs, which reportedly first surfaced via notorious webforum 4chan, are now being pulled from social media platform X by copyright claims, Eurogamer has noticed. The takedowns all but confirm the images' legitimacy.
Photos show a bearded Jack Black wearing Steve's trademark blue shirt and jeans, holding a blocky pickaxe. Other images show a mossy-looking Creeper, cuboid bee and a rather cross-eyed pink sheep.
The images are accompanied by text identifying them as coming from a "packaging guide" document, put together by Mojang to provide advice for prospective marketing partners.
This text also gives us a brief synopsis of the Minecraft film's plot, which will apparently see Jack Black's Steve captured by an evil entity known as Malgosha, and then needing to be rescued by "four fresh visitors" to the Minecraft world.
Mojang and Warner Bros. have so far kept their Minecraft film project under-wraps, though reporting in the US film trades picked up Black's casting back in January. Black acknowledged this at the time with a social media post showing him reading a Minecraft guidebook.
Previous reporting has linked Aquaman star Jason Momoa to the movie, which will also apparently feature the game's climactic Ender Dragon.
The timing of this leak is interesting, coming just days after Jack Black hit the headlines for a comment made by his Tenacious D bandmate Kyle Gass regarding the attempted assassination of former President Trump, and the subsequent cancellation of the band's ongoing world tour.
Black has faced criticism online for his handling of the matter - both from fans enraged at the tour's cancellation and others upset at Gass' original comment. For now, Tenacious D seems unlikely to tour again before the upcoming US election, amidst an increasingly fraught US political climate.
Eurogamer has contacted Warner Bros for comment.