The Pillagers

The Pillagers: Part I, written as The Pillagers is a 2024 American animated musical comedy-drama action-adventure feature-film, directed by Jared Hess, produced by Charlie. A who co-wrote the screenplay with Troy. S as the main writer and and is based on the critical acclaim, best-selling video game, Minecraft. The film features the voice actors of Al Pacino (as the main villain), alongside Noah Schnapp, Jacob Tremblay and Gary Oldman. The story follows a local friend named, Jim who teams up with a group of villagers to stop the evil villain who was a normal villager before, named Norman.

Development began in 2020 with the unused working title, ''The War of the Pillagers. The Pillagers'' is marked to be the grand return of the classic 2-D-animation style since, Minecraft: the Movie which was released in late 2017.

The Pillagers had its world premiere at the El Capitan Theatre on June 1, 2024 before moving on to a limited release in New York and California for a few weeks on June 14, 2024 and later, expanding into wide release on June 29, 2024. It ended up becoming the highest-grossing film of 2024, the second highest-grossing animated film behind Disney's Frozen II and the highest-grossing video game film, bringing in a total of nearly 630 million dollars at the box office; making it a huge commercial success and received largely positive reviews from film critics, audiences and fans of the original video game with praise aiming to its action scenes, screenplay, voice acting, the animation, score, musical songs and themes. At the 97th Academy Awards, it won three awards, one for Best Animated Feature-film, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.

The Pillagers spawned in a sequel, titled The Pillagers: Part II in which was released in November 2025 with Jared Hess return back as the director and Charlie. A as the screenwriter.

Plot summary
A press release from late-2023 describes the story as follows:"'When a villager named, Jim is cursed by his best friend who is now evil named Norman, he and a group of villagers, in armor are send off to find him, hoping to stop him from doing more chaos. However, instead it created a war..'"

Cast & Characters

 * Norman - A 25 year old villain who was a normal cleric back in the early days, but now a evoker with powers and is the friend of Jim (voiced by Jacob Tremblay)
 * In the early draft of the script which was dated from 2022, he was meant to be a pillagers


 * Jim - A 23 year old kind farmer and is the friend of Norman (voiced by Noah Schnapp)
 * He was meant to be a toolsmith in the first draft


 * Lewis - One of the villagers who take place in finding Norman (voiced by James Nicholas)
 * James - A armorer who get involved in the final battle (voiced by Ben Schyanz)
 * Max - A butcher (voiced by Jeffrey Han)
 * Gordon - A weaponsmith who make tools for the group who goes on the trip with Jim (voiced by Keith David)
 * Geroge. A - A young fisherman (voiced by Angel Contreras)
 * Pete - A kind, truthful librarian, in his late 40s (voiced by Rey Torres)
 * Alex - A wandering trader with two llamas who was found by the group (voiced by Yotam Ofek)
 * The two(llamas he had wasn't even in the first draft, instead it was the horses who was with the trader and the original name for him was Matthew


 * Pillager #1 - He is a part of the army that Norman made for the war (voiced by Roland Rojas)
 * Pillager #2 - The first pillagers that Norman created; he was a mason before (voiced by Kevin Mayberry)
 * Paul - A mean vindicator who will killed anyone and animals too with his hands (voiced by Jeff Bratz)
 * Vindicator #1 - Just like Paul, he is a vindicator, but had a axe that he used (voiced by Matt Riedy)
 * Evoker #1 - One of the first evoker to be created by Norman (voiced by Craig Smith)
 * Arila - Used to be Norman's best friend before he became the villain. (voiced by Kate McIntyre)
 * Young Arlia is voiced by Sofia Chicorelli Serna


 * Jackie - A homeless villagers who get treated like trash by the villagers (voiced by Mitchell Muniz)

Marketing
The marketing campaign for the film cost nearly 210 million dollars, and started with the release of the first photo of the film sometimes in June 2023, showing concept art of one of the villages burning to the ground. A month later, the 2 and a half minute teaser trailer of the movie was drop online to Youtube on July 8, 2023, and gained 196.1 million views in its first 24 hours; at that time, it became the ninth-most-viewed animated film trailer, between It (197.0 million views) and Avengers: Infinity War (179.0 million views) and was meet with positive reviews. Warner. Bros partnered with over 130 other brands.

The second trailer and official trailer was released online months later, along with a poster on December 23, 2023, revealing the new title for the film, called The Pillagers: Part I and a new release date for June 29, 2024 and was met with once again, positive reviews.

Documentary film
Jared Hess (the director of Minecraft: the Movie) decided to record some footage of the studio, showing the crew working on the film in December of 2022 for about a week. It wasn't until a month later in January of 2023 that he reached out to Warner. Bros about documenting the production of the Pillagers and a few of its sequel, The Pillagers: Part II in which Studio agree to do so.

In total, about 2,500 hours of footage was recorded from January 2023 and the June 2024 premiere.