Throw a pickaxe in Hollywood today, and you could easily hit a dozen video game adaptations in the works as TV series and movies. They’re all vying for the same things — critical acclaim, big bucks at the box office or streaming subscriber spikes from built-in fandoms. But it’s a risky gamble: Will they become a “Borderlands” movie flop, or a “Last of Us” success?

Next month, Legendary Entertainment, Warner Bros. Pictures and Microsoft are mining for box office gold with a different kind of game-to-film adaptation: “A Minecraft Movie.”

For the uninitiated, the Microsoft-owned “Minecraft” is a sandbox game that drops players into the Overworld, a whimsical dimension made up of blocky voxels that look like boxes. There’s no storyline or single way to play: Users can make objects, build structures, fight enemy mobs, befriend animals and explore the islands crafted by other players. Picture Legos in a world with infinite possibilities.

The game allows each player to steer characters and craft storylines all on their own — that’s a big part of the appeal of this type of highly customizable gameplay. So when it comes to adapting “Minecraft” for the big screen, it means that every fan of the game will walk into the theater with a markedly different vision of what to expect.

“We’re calling it ‘A Minecraft Movie’ because we’re respecting the fact that there’s no one story that drives the game,” says Mary Parent, chairman of worldwide production for Legendary.

“We’re not the official story,” adds director Jared Hess. “We’re not canonizing anything. We’re just one of a zillion stories.”

“Minecraft” has become a staple with gamers of all ages, but much of its success is due to the kid-friendly game’s popularity with tweens. Maintaining that PG-rated tone in the movie was an important requirement for Microsoft. And yet, “A Minecraft Movie” features spicy stars Jason Momoa and Danielle Brooks (along with young Emma Myers and Sebastian Eugene Hansen) as a ragtag bunch of misfits who find themselves transported to the fantastical cubic world, guided by Jack Black as an expert crafter named Steve.

If the game’s most ardent fans are unhappy with the film treatment, they certainly won’t be shy about sharing their opinion. The trio of corporate heavyweights behind the venture acknowledge that the movie is an experiment using linear storytelling around a user-directed game. In success, “A Minecraft Movie” could yield countless spinoffs. In failure, it could be akin to “Halo,” the poorly received Showtime series based on another important Microsoft game franchise. “Halo” was canceled last year after two big-budget seasons.

Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, says the tech behemoth is embracing the spirit of trial and error as Hollywood takes on gaming and vice versa. “We’re learning and growing through this process, which is giving us more confidence that we should do more,” Spencer says. “We learned from doing ‘Halo.’ We learned from doing ‘Fallout.’ So all of these build on themselves. And obviously we’ll have a couple that miss. But what I’d say to the Xbox community that likes this work is, ‘You’re going to see more, because we’re gaining confidence and we’re learning through this.’”

In the years since “Minecraft” arrived in 2011, having been developed by Sweden’s Mojang Studios, it has become the bestselling video game of all time, with more than 300 million copies sold. Microsoft scooped up Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014. Today, Microsoft says that almost two-thirds of “Minecraft” players are based outside of the U.S. and monthly active users (MAUs) have grown five times since Mojang’s acquisition by Microsoft. The game has launched on more than 15 platforms since Microsoft took over.

That’s around the same time that Mojang set out to bring “Minecraft” to the big screen. The movie, which opens wide April 4 (coincidentally, the 50th anniversary of Microsoft), has been more than a decade in development and went through three directors before Legendary, WB and Microsoft settled on Hess, who directed “Napoleon Dynamite.” The stakes for all involved are high because of the value of the “Minecraft” franchise to Microsoft, and because Hollywood’s embrace of gaming has been yielding hits such as 2023’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” as well as HBO’s “The Last of Us” and Amazon Prime Video’s series adaptation of the Microsoft-owned “Fallout.” If “A Minecraft Movie” flops, it could set back the trust Hollywood and video game publishers have built up with audiences when it comes to satisfying adaptations.

The project started in the hands of “Deadpool & Wolverine” director Shawn Levy. In 2015, it was taken up by “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” helmer Rob McElhenney. By 2019, Peter Sollett, who made “Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” had taken it on. So what pushed “A Minecraft Movie” up the hill and into multiplexes?

For Jesse Ehrman, president of Warner Bros Pictures, it was Hess’ singular vision. He had a clear understanding of what makes “Minecraft” connect with players and parents. “Think about somebody who can be funny for young people, but also sophisticated enough for an adult audience. Jared is on a really short list. When you think about ‘Napoleon Dynamite,’ that felt cool and edgy and hysterical, but it was still a PG movie,” Ehrman says.

It was Legendary who brought Hess into the fold, kicking the project into high gear over a decade after the entertainment company first lost out to WB on the rights to “Minecraft.” “There are many things about ‘Minecraft’ itself that are absurd. It’s part of what makes it so fun — whether it’s piglins or llamas,” Legendary’s Parent says, citing two of the unusual animals that feature in the game. “Tone was everything, and we felt like Jared was uniquely qualified to understand the tone and to help us take this journey.”

Kayleen Walters, chief of franchise at Microsoft Gaming and head of Mojang Studios, recalls interviewing writer and director candidates early on about their knowledge of the game. While Hess can excitedly wax poetic about the specifics of his 10-year-old daughter’s block creations (“Dad, I built this really awesome hotel, but it’s populated by wolves!”), he’s no Overworld expert. But it was Hess’ overarching view of what made the franchise one of a kind that struck Walters. “While he wasn’t as strongly versed in ‘Minecraft’ as other candidates, his quirkiness came to life, and we wanted to partner with him,” she says.

Hess was eager to reunite with Black, who previously starred in his absurdist 2006 comedy “Nacho Libre,” but the casting of the comedian as Steve raised eyebrows for some hardcore “Minecraft” fans. Torfi Frans Ólafsson, Mojang’s senior director of original content, isn’t too concerned about the critics. “His character was originally a talking pig, and it was very, very, very late in the development where we had the idea to switch it to become Steve, because we needed an expert and host,” Ólafsson says. “This is not my Steve or your Steve — this is Jack Black’s Steve. A lot of fans responded when they saw the first teasers and trailers, like, ‘Hey, wait a minute — this is just Jack Black. This isn’t Jack Black being someone else.’ And maybe it is, because this is literally him interpreting this character and what it means to him.”

As it turns out, Steve means quite a lot to Black, who went full Method on set. During production, Ólafsson got Xboxes for the trailers and set up private “Minecraft” servers for the cast and crew to mess around on. Black quickly became “the most passionate” player of all and logged more than 100 hours playing “Minecraft.”

“He was just completely manic, hoarding stuff in the mines, searching for lapis lazuli because he liked the way it sounds,” Ólafsson recalls, mentioning the bright-blue stones that figure into the game. “He kept saying it: ‘Can I talk about lapis lazuli in the movie?’”

Soon, Black will get the chance to see himself in-game (and mine as much lapis lazuli as his heart desires), as Microsoft is bringing its “A Minecraft Movie” heroes to the game as avatars on March 20.

There are many ways that Microsoft, Legendary and Warner Bros. will measure the performance of “A Minecraft Movie” — notably the box office turnout and uptick in popularity for the game. But Ólafsson has a more personal metric in mind — one that puts him in sync with the millions of parents who will usher their gamers into the multiplexes.

“The goalpost is if my kids think I didn’t screw it up,” he says. “Because that’s what they’ve been telling me all this time on this journey. My 18-year-old son, who grew up with ‘Minecraft,’ has pleaded with me, ‘Just don’t let them screw this up.’”

He adds, “If I can go to a 10-year-old’s birthday party and I don’t get scorned or ridiculed or am the subject of collective anger, then I think I’ve succeeded.”