Earlier this week, while meeting up with some of my friends for a drink, I found myself getting grilled about A Minecraft Movie. I had shared my lukewarm opinions about the film and how, in all honesty, Jack Black’s performance waned on me. So my mates all wanted to know who I would’ve cast in his stead, and I had no clue, not until I saw the news that Matt Berry was originally meant to be Steve, now that would’ve been gold.
According to Puck, Matt Berry, best known for his role as Laszlo Cravensworth in the vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows, was originally meant to play Steve in A Minecraft Movie. Unfortunately, this didn’t end up happening due to scheduling issues. At the time of filming for A Minecraft Movie, Berry was already busy shooting the last season of his vampire series.
Despite not getting to take on the mantle of Steve, Matt Berry still does make a small appearance in A Minecraft Movie. I won’t spoil anything here as it’s a neat little cameo, but I will say that Berry was still able to steal the show, even though he was only on screen for a few minutes.
Jack Black may not have been my first pick for Steve, but I can’t deny he’s still a good fit for the film, if not only for how much he seems to love Minecraft.
One of the biggest talking points during the marketing for A Minecraft Movie was how much Minecraft Jack Black was playing as he was shooting the film. Apparently, he became obsessed with lapis lazuli and spent most of his breaks mining for the ore: “He was in his trailer anytime he had a break—he was just slaying it in the Overworld,” director Jared said. “[The producer and Minecraft senior director Torfi Frans Olafsson] put together a special server just for the crew. Jack got obsessed with searching for lapis lazuli, as he calls it. I mean, every day, it was like, I’d pop in there to go over the scene in the morning, and he would be dressed as Steve playing the game. It was kind of a surreal thing to behold.”
But no matter how much Minecraft Jack Black plays, I can’t help but mourn a reality that never was: Matt Berry and his extraordinary line deliveries of Minecraft items.
Physicist Hugh Everett III first proposed the idea of “many worlds” in his 1957 PhD thesis. It later became a cornerstone of the multiverse theory, the idea that there are multiple universes, each with its own laws of physics and different realities. Meaning, somewhere out there in the infinite expanse of space, beyond our comprehension, there’s a universe where Matt Berry ended up playing Steve in A Minecraft Movie—it’s not much, but it’s something to hang on to.
