PRESTON – Jared Hess, a native of Preston, recently directed a new mind-blowing movie, A Minecraft Movie, which has taken the world by storm. Hess, co-director of Napoleon Dynamite with his wife Jerusha, originally hit it big with the movie mostly staring friends and places in his hometown.
Jack Black and Jerad Hess working on A Minecraft Movie recently.
He has also directed Nacho Libre, Gentlemen Bronco’s and others but his latest project, A Minecraft Movie, is probably the biggest hit yet.
Hess took the unlikely duo of Jason Momoa and Jack Black then added Sebastian Hansen, Emma Myers and blessed it with his Napoleon Dynamite flare. The movie takes four misfits and plunges them into a bizarre world.
Hess has given the world a gut busting masterpiece and has already proven to be a blockbuster hit.
“It’s been a fun movie to make,” Hess said in an exclusive interview with Cache Valley Daily. “It came out last Friday and in three days it made $313 million worldwide. It is the number one movie in the world.”
When you put Jack Black, who teamed up with Hess in the 2006 movie Nacho Libre, something big was bound to happen.
“Jack, he’s the best, we’ve known each other for over 20 years,” he said. “Over the years we’ve had other projects together and we’ve got to be pretty good friends.”
He and Momoa had never met, but they knew each other from each other’s work.
“They both had a man crush on each other,” Hess said. “They were excited to work with each other and they were both hilarious on screen.”
Jennifer Coolidge is also part the movie, and she is another actress that has worked with Hess in other movies.
“She is a comedy goddess,” Hess said. “She has a subplot threading throughout the movie.”
A Minecraft Movie is a kind of global phenomenon right now. Clips can be found on Instagram and X and other social platforms. Minecraft the game was created by Markus Persson of Sweden. He was a video game programmer and introduced the game to the public in about 2011.
“Minecraft is part of just about every high school kid’s upbringing. They know it and have played it,” Hess said. “Minecraft is the number one video game in the world.”
The producers and Hess have been working on the movie since 2019. It was filmed in New Zealand. The area where they filmed reminded him of his Franklin County roots.
“While we were scouting locations it reminded me of southeast Idaho. I sent my brother Nate some video and asked him where he thought we were,” Hess said. “He said it looks like you’re somewhere near Dayton.”
They shot the movie in four months, January through April of 2024.
“We had Grant Mago build the sets,” he said. “He was the production designer for the Lord of the Rings series, King Cong and other great films.”
After the trailers came out the kids started quoting Jack Black’s lines and when they saw it on screen they went nuts. Hess sent an X file with kids screaming and throwing stuff.
“People are going crazy, they clap, they cheer, they give standing ovations, and some of them even throw popcorn. Someone even brought a live chicken to one theater. There is so much nostalgia packed into this movie,” he said. “It is bringing people back to the theaters to have a good time.”
He said nobody could have anticipated this would happen. There are already talks of a sequel.
Rotten Tomatoes said there was an overwhelmingly positive reaction from audiences to the movie.
The Cast of Minecraft the Movie stand together for a photograph.
“The film defied all expectations and predictions, earning $313.7 million in its first three days in theaters,” the film publication said. “With the film costing $150 million to produce, it’s easy to call the movie a success and a needed product for the 2025 theatrical landscape, which has struggled to secure a real hit in theaters.”
Klein Felt of Directed said Nacho Libre and Napoleon Dynamite filmmaker Jared Hess takes audiences into a block-based world in A Minecraft Movie for a hilarious fish out of water adventure led by Jason Momoa and Jack Black.
Some critics are calling the film one of the funniest comedies in years with its Napoleon Dynamite like antics and the colorful video game world and standout performances by all of the actors.