Enacting a transformation almost as dramatic as that time when he got really fat for a year, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia creator Rob McElhenney has confirmed that he’ll be adding “director of family-friendly video game adaptations” to his current duties as writer and star of a gleefully amoral FXX sitcom. According to a post on the front page of Mojang AB, the company behind massively successful block-smashing simulator Minecraft, McElhenney has been tapped to direct the planned film adaptation of the Microsoft-owned property.
Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to Minecraft last year, after the massive success of The Lego Movie sent it on a cube-seeking frenzy, gobbling up block-based IP like the toddler child of extremely negligent parents. Night At The Museum director Shawn Levy was originally attached to the project, but dropped out after his proposal for ratcheting a plot onto the skeleton of the narrative-free game was rejected by the studio. There’s no word on what sort of script McElhenney will be working from for the film; Levy took screenwriters Kieran and Michele Mulroney with him when he left the project, and no new ones have been announced.
Minecraft will be McElhenney’s second project as a director, following up on Legendary Pictures’ Figments, a similarly kid-friendly picture about a young boy whose imagination runs away from him with disastrous results. He’s also directed a handful of Sunny episodes, as well as the test footage that got the show picked up by FX in the first place.
McElhenney tweeted about his involvement with the film earlier today, saying he wants to do “something strange and wonderful,”which seems like an inevitability, given that the mind behind the Dick Towel has now gotten involved in the kids-movie game.