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Latest revision as of 23:44, 15 August 2022
Mojang Animation Studio (commonly known as Mojang Animation) is an American animation studio that creates and works on full-length animated features and short films and is a part of the Warner. Bros Animation Group, owned by Warner. Bros Picture. For a while, the studio was mainly focused on creating short films for the website, Youtube until mid-2019 when they announced that a film was in development. The studio is best-known for its traditional animated feature-films based on their popular game, Minecraft, including the acclaimed film franchise titled, Villagers and Pillagers, Minecraft: The Movie, and many more.
It was founded by the game creators, Markus "Notch" Persson and Jens "Jeb" Bergensten in January of 2019. Since its founding, the studio so far had produced 5 animated films from the release of Minecraft: The Movie (2022) to Villagers and Pillagers - Part III (2025).
History
2018-2022: Founding, short films and Minecraft: The Movie
In mid-2018, Markus Persson aka "Notch" said during a video interview with Jimmy Fallon that there were a possible chance that he might make a studio in which would creates animated short films. This resulted in the video to go viral and went number one trending on Twitter for a whole week with the hashtags "NotchNewStudio". On December 1, 2018, Jens Bergensten aka "Jeb" respond back, stating that Notch was actually thinking of making a studio, but it unlikely he would do it for real. On December 23, 2018, before Christmas's Eve, Notch would posted a tweet at around 12:05 P.M, officially saying that he will make an animated studio that is divide with Warner. Bros Animation Group. Shortly after the tweet was posted, it immediately received hundred of likes in just under 3 minutes with many people freaking out. A hour later, it was already on trending due to the numerous of retweets it was getting. By the mid-afternoon, it had received around 4.7 million likes. Jens Bergensten would also tweet out the same thing and it went viral just like Notch's post. As of December 29, 2018, the tweet had around 5.5 million likes. On January 15, 2019, Markus Persson and Jens Bergensten bought the studio and named it Mojang Animation. A day later, on January 16, Notch and Jeb would both post out a long blog on their website, stating that yesterday, they had bought the studio for $400 million dollars and a new account was created with the same name as the studio. Months later on June 9, 2019, the Studio announced on twitter that they are working on a film, based on their game with a release date for 2022. Later that same year on July 22, Minecraft uploaded a 5-minutes short film, titled The Baby Villager that worked on by the new studio and is marked to be the first film that Mojang Animation released online. Recording to the video, it was about a villager who is homeless and get bullied by the townfolks. It wasn't until a baby villager named Jake decided to help him and take him to his house. Years passed by and the villager is now a farmer who works with the person that help him. The short received largely positive reviews and got around 10 million views in its first 24 hours.
On Christmas's Eve 2019, Markus Persson would tweet out some information about the upcoming film. He stated that the movie is in early stage of production with around 500+ people working on it right now and revealed the new release date for the movie, November 1, 2022. During the production of Minecraft, the Studio created two more shorts film, titled The Creeper and Zombie Outbreak in which were released both online on June 8, 2020 to positive reviews. In 2021, Markus and Jens tweeted out that the studio would be getting a name change from Mojang Animation to Mojang Animation Studio. On December 5, 2021, Jens said that the film would be a musical. In early-January 2022, Markus announced that the title for the film would be simply, Minecraft: The Movie and stated that the release date was pushed back a week. Later that same year, Minecraft: The Movie was released in theaters on November 8, 2022 and received mixed reviews, but was a box office success; grossing more than 300+ million dollars. It would later on gained a cult following.
2023-2026: Renaissance era, rise in popularity, and successful films
During the development of Minecraft: The Movie sometime around 2019, there were plans to create a second-feature film based on their game; many ideas was scrapped, but one of them would be the 2023 musical film titled, Villager and Pillagers - Part I, the first traditional (2-D) animation feature-film. On October 26, 2023, Part I was released to theaters and became the one of the studio's first biggest critical and commercial success. Directed by Jared Hess, who previously was the director of the studio's first film with the score composed by Ludwig Göransson and songs written by songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Part I grossed 500+ million dollars at the box office, a big hit for the studio at that time. Plus, it received numerous awards and nominations. The film would launch a film franchise, spawning in sequels that were more successful than the first. Then, Minecraft began to explode in popularity; before Part I was released a month prior, it only had 1 to 1.5 million players active online, but the count of players grow and grow to the point where it had around 10+ million players that were active, the biggest in a long time. Recording to Notch who worked on the feature, the reason on why the game explodes was mostly due to its commercial success and the positive reviews the film was gaining at the time, alongside the songs that went viral over the 2023 thanksgiving season. From there, Part I was the first movie of a big series of massive hits that the studio would later produced and released over the next 4-5 years and was the beginning of their own Renaissance era.
During post-production on Villager and Pillagers - Part I, the studio would decided to work on a second film of the franchise, titled Villager and Pillagers - Part II and release it a year later after Part I on November 11, 2024. Just like the first film, it was the studios's biggest critical and commercial success. Directed by Jared Hess again, Part II grossed a worldwide total of nearly 1 billion dollars at the box office. A month later in December of 2024, the studio released a series based on their franchise, titled The Villagers and it received mostly positive reviews with praise for its humor.
In 2025, A third film in the franchise, titled Villager and Pillagers - Part III was released on December 24, 2025 and repeated the same success as the first two films did. Directed by Jared Hess once again, Part III crossed the billion dollars mark and grossed a worldwide total of 1.3 billion dollars, the highest grossing-film in the franchise yet and was a record for the studio.
Productions
Main article: List of Mojang Animation Studios films
Mojang Animation Studio as of now, had produced animated feature-films that were computer-animated at first, but moved on to traditional animation ever since the release of Part I. The studio's first film titled, Minecraft: The Movie was released on November 8, 2022 with their recent film that was released, Villagers and Pillagers - Part III on December 24, 2025.