Netflix announces Minecraft animated series

6 months ago 28

28 minutes ago

Tom Richardson,BBC Newsbeat

Mojang A computer generated image of a scene from Minecraft. Two player characters, one male, one female, holding a pickaxe and a sword respectively, are on top of a tall, mud structure topped with grass. They are rendered in the game's trademark "blocky" style, with a dog, pig and sheep next to them. Below them, skeleton and zombie enemy characters are visible as the landscape stretches off into the background.

Netflix has announced plans to release an animated series based on Minecraft.

The best-selling video game of all time celebrates its 15th birthday this year, and the reveal dropped during an anniversary celebration.

A short teaser trailer shows a green creeper character from the game scuttle into the middle of a black screen before exploding in a pixelated grey cloud.

Once the fog clears, the camera sweeps into an underground cavern filled with lava.

The shot eventually closes in on a red Netflix "N" logo on top of a volcanic rock before cutting to the words "Netflix x Minecraft".

A caption underneath the video reads: "This just happened: The best-selling game of all time & the biggest streamer in the world are teaming up to bring you a brand new Minecraft Netflix animated series."

Netflix said the show would "feature an original story with new characters" and more information would follow soon.

Allow Google YouTube content?

This article contains content provided by

Google YouTube

. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read

and

before accepting. To view this content choose

‘accept and continue’.

Video game adaptations are big business in Hollywood at the moment, with many big-name franchises either in development or heavily rumoured to be on the way.

Recent releases, including the Mario Bros Movie, The Last of Us and Fallout, reversed the trend of video game adaptations being critical and commercial failures.

Netflix has already had success with animated versions of beloved games, including an anime inspired by the Castlevania series, Cyberpunk: Edge Runners and League of Legends spin-off Arkane.

A Minecraft movie, starring Jack Black as playable character Steve, is due to hit cinemas next April.

Xbox maker Microsoft bought the rights to Minecraft in 2014 for $2.5bn.

It also owns Bethesda, the studio behind the Fallout series, which saw a huge spike in players after Amazon released a show inspired by the games last month.

Minecraft has already sold 300 million copies, but Xbox boss Phil Spencer has spoken about keeping players engaged with the company's games, and tie-ins on film and TV are one way to do that.