Month: September 2019

Around a decade after its original release, Minecraft continues to grow and reach astonishing new player records. According to Business Insider, the game reached a new monthly player milestone.

As of this week, the open-ended sandbox game has more than 112 million monthly players. This is up substantially from the 91 million monthly players that Microsoft announced in October 2018. The numbers count players on all platforms: console, PC, mobile, and others.

To put Minecraft’s popularity in context, Epic announced in August 2018 that Fortnite had 78.3 million monthly players. Meanwhile, the MMO creation game Roblox reached 100 million monthly active users in August 2019.

Minecraft still receives regular updates, while the game was added to Xbox Game Pass in April 2019; this no doubt helped expand the footprint of the popular game even further.

Minecraft boss Helen Chiang told Business Insider that Minecraft is a game that people enjoy coming back to again and again. “It may not always be the one that’s in the forefront, because there are a lot of great games that continue to come out, but it’s one that they love to return to,” Chiang said.

Microsoft acquired the Minecraft franchise and developer Mojang in 2014 for $2.5 billion. Series creator Markus “Notch” Persson is no longer involved with the franchise. He spent $70 million on a Beverly Hills mansion, outbidding Beyonce and Jay-Z for the home.

Looking ahead, a Minecraft movie is on the way. Writer Allison Schroeder (Hidden Figures, Frozen 2) was hired to pen the latest draft of the screenplay The Minecraft movie is scheduled for release in theatres on March 4, 2022. There is no word yet on if it will be animation or live action, or a hybrid, nor do we know who may star in it. At one point, Steve Carell was apparently connected to the project, though it’s unclear if that’s still the case.

The next new Minecraft game is the AR title Minecraft Earth, which is scheduled to release later this year.

Actor Orlando Bloom’s very first major movie role was none other than Legolas in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. He’s now revealed how much he was paid for the 2001 fantasy film, and it might be lower than you would think. He appeared on The Howard Stern Show recently where he said he was paid $175,000 for the first movie.

“Nothing, I got nothing. 175 grand . . . Listen, greatest gift of my life. Are you kidding me? I’d do it again for half the money,” he said, as reported by Metro UK.

Bloom, who originally auditioned for a smaller role, Faramir, added that he re-negotiated for more money for The Two Towers and The Return of the King. “I was in a good spot. They negotiated pretty well for me to buy a couple of houses; it was that kind of money,” he said, according to The Playlist.

Bloom went on to play Legolas again in The Hobbit trilogy, and presumably he was able to negotiate for a good sum. Bloom currently stars in the Amazon show Carnival Row alongside Cara Delevingne.

No new Lord of the Rings movies have been announced, but a biopic about author J.R.R. Tolkien starring Nicolas Hoult in the title role hit theatres in May this year.