Secret Level’s Tim Miller and Dave Wilson break down Prime Video’s bold video game adaptation anthology

Tim Miller and Dave Wilson are bringing their unique expertise to a number of new video game franchises on Prime Video’s Secret level. The pair are part of the creative leadership team at Blur Studio, the visual effects studio that has achieved acclaim in film, video games and television, including creating Netflix films. Love, Death and Robots. Both Miller and Wilson also expanded their talents into feature filmmaking, with the former directing the first Dead Pool and Terminator: Dark Fate while the latter directed the one led by Vin Diesel Bloodshot adaptation.

Secret level sees the duo combining their previous talents in the world of TV with Blur’s extensive video game history to adapt some of the most iconic franchises for the screen in an anthology format. The show’s first season will consist of 15 episodes of varying lengths, adapting FromSoftware’s novel. Armored CoreSony ConcordiaSmilegate Cross-fireWizards of the CoastDungeons & DragonsArchetype ExodusTiMi’s Honor of KingsCapcom Mega manAmazon Games’ New World: AeternumBandai Namco Pac-ManSloclap’s SifuMossmouth, LLC CavingObsidian The outer worldsEpic Unreal Tournament, Warhammer 40,000: Marine 2 and various PlayStation characters.

In addition to the roster of iconic gaming IPs, Miller and Wilson have assembled a star-studded cast to Secret levelincluding Arnold and Patrick Schwarzeengger, Keanu Reeves, Kevin and Heaven Hart, Gabriel Luna, Ariana Greenblatt, Claudia Doumit and Temuera Morrison, among many others. Bringing an innovative approach to the video game adaptation genre, the show not only aims to keep the genre alive, but also Prime Video’s successful streak with it alive after Precipitationis a great success.

In honor of the New York Comic Con 2024 panel, Screen speech interviewed Tim Miller and Dave Wilson to discuss Secret levelhow they dreamed up the bold anthology of video game and tabletop adaptations, their hopes of expanding the show into multi-episode arcs and future seasons, as well as the wild turns their creative team has taken with certain properties, notably that of Pac-Man.

Blur’s history in video games has been a huge benefit to Secret levelDevelopment

“…it was truly…a moment of epiphany…”

Screen Rant: Let me tell you, Secret level surprised me. It was incredible, I loved it. For both of you, what lessons Love, Death and Robots influenced the direction of the show, especially in the field of video game animation?

Tim Miller: I feel like Love, Death and Robots really grew out of our work in the video game industry, because Blur is known for, [over the course of] We’ve been making scenes and trailers and things like that for 30 years, and that gave us this love of shorts and animation, which translated into Love, Death & Robots. And in fact, when we released Love, Death, & Robots, I just basically put the Blur video on an iPad and said, “Yeah, we just want to do a lot of stuff like that,” and it sold. the show. [Chuckles] So this feels like a full circle for us.

Dave Wilson: Exactly like that. It was just a reel and a pair of shorts.

Tim Miller: It helps having David Fincher in the room.

Now, how has your existing relationship with the video game animation space helped shape the development and direction of Secret level?

Dave Wilson: As Tim said, a lot of the games in the series are people we’ve worked with for 20, 30 years. Some of them are almost trusting an intimidating place, like Exodus, the new game that’s coming out. They have an episode in our series, and James Ohlen, who runs Archetype, we did the whole [Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic] trailers with James when they were making these games, and he just gets out of the way. He’s like, “Whatever you guys want to do, I trust you.” You feel like this is liberating, but it’s really intimidating in the fact that it’s just up to us to mess up at this point.

Tim Miller: As well as creating a massive space opera with some of the greatest authors, Peter Hamilton, Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Dave Wilson: And the art director at Archetype is an ex-Blurian, Jeremy Cook, who we’ve also known for years. But I think the two things are the trust of this community, but also the kind of outcry for every trailer that we released, where there were comments: “I wish there was a whole series. I wish there was a feature film like that.” And the series is as if we were answering the call. And we wanted to see that all these years too. So it’s kind of a slap-on-the-head moment: “Why didn’t we do this sooner?” Which is really Tim’s fault more than anyone else’s.

Speaking of which, Tim, when you first mentioned the idea of Love, Death and Video GamesWhat were some of the immediate responses and feedback you received from the Blur team?

Dave Wilson: It was like, “Wait, what?”

Tim Miller: Yes, it really was. Honestly, the EP just looked at me and said, “Oh my God, I can sell this.” And it really was, as Dave said, an epiphany of a moment because it seemed so obvious to develop it. We were telling short stories with cut scenes of video game characters before we did Love, Death & Robots, so it really was. I felt more stupid than anything, and then everyone said, “Tim, what took you so long? You must be stupid.” That was the first reaction.

Dave Wilson: That was the understood statement.

The program’s game IP selection process was “Complicated”

“…there are many more on my list of games that we would like to do.”

Dave, can you talk about the diverse selection of games that cater to both hardcore gamers and the general public?

David Wilson: Yes. Game selection was a complicated process that would take too long to answer in one sitting.

Tim Miller: Something for everyone.

David Wilson: Yes. But the show was divided into levels, like 15, 10, 5 minutes. We wanted to not get any kind of AAA franchises and long-running franchises, but also indies and nostalgic titles. And as best we can, try to curate as much science fiction, fantasy, and humor as we can. That’s the beauty of the anthology format: you can make something for everyone. And underneath all of that is just finding a story that resonates not just specifically on that level of play, but on a very human level. This was our way of inviting not only gamers but also non-gamers to our series.

From what I read, I know your wishlist was pretty big, so how do you add that up to 15 and select those IPs to Secret leveland what key factors influence these choices?

Tim Miller: I wouldn’t make the mistake of saying that the 15 that are there now are our top 15 picks. Because it’s complicated: “Who can do this, what new games are coming out?” So there are many more on my list of games we would like to do. So hopefully we all look forward to more in Secret Level. But it’s really a choice of “Who do we talk to first?” Many of the games that are in the series are clients that have worked with Blur, or one of these other companies that are part of a small consortium of animation friends and family, because they trust us and have worked with us before.

It’s really strange to have all these different games from different publishers and people who are normally competitors working together. But I think it’s great, and I think the more we got into the show, the more we got to see how it’s going to be a tide that lifts all boats in a way that you couldn’t if you just said, “Well, it’ll just be Xbox” or “It’ll just be PlayStation” or something like that. This is truly a celebration of gaming.

One of the topics I wanted to talk about was Dungeons and Dragons from the first season, which is a tabletop RPG. Are there any other tabletop RPGs or board games that fit this that you would like to adapt for a future season?

David Wilson: Yes. It wasn’t just video games. Without mentioning specific ones, games aren’t just video games, obviously. Warhammer is there too, and they just released Space Marine, but it’s also a tabletop game. That’s where its roots are, and its strength is card games, board games, whatever. I would love to see this open. We want to celebrate all games, not just video games.

Tim Miller: In a strange way too, the Honor of King episode is built around the board game. [Chuckles] They’re playing a board game, so that’s awesome.

The blur received a “Big deck F—-ng“Information and guidance from each game studio

The duo also explains the importance of having a diverse team of writers

Now, can you explain the pitch pool system and how it works and how certain things are selected?

Tim Miller: I think we tried to recreate as much as possible the process of exploration and story discovery that we had on Love, Death & Robots, which is basically me reading books of short stories and finding the ones I liked. But we had a very large list of authors that we liked working with and who trusted us, because we treated their stories that we had developed beforehand well. So we’d go to them, build a big deck, Dave would talk to the developer, and he’d come back with a list of do’s and don’ts, and a big shit deck. everything about the game.

We usually get some guidance from the intellectual property holder or publisher about what might be a good place to explore. And then, we took them to authors who we thought had an affinity for the material, whether it was science fiction or fantasy, whatever, and we got pitches from that. It could be one page, it could be two pages, and that gave us a lot of variety. They would give us some really crazy ideas and then some really beautiful ideas, but they were all things we would never have thought of if it was just David and I sitting in a room.

Dave Wilson: Yes, like I said, the beauty of all anthologies is the variety, and it would be a shame if only Tim and I came up with ideas.

Tim Miller: God knows every episode would be people killing each other, but it’s great to be able to have a lot of diversity, and just the number of authors is pretty low. How many authors were there, 50?

Dave Wilson: You embarrassed me at one point, because there were so many.

Tim Miller: Yes, you seemed indecisive. [Laughs] But there are many authors, and there is a wide variety of points of view that we simply wouldn’t understand if we didn’t do it that way.

Pac-Man show episode left them emotional”We were gutting people’s childhoods”

“…even the director’s introduction was incredible.”

I was impressed with the Pac-Man episode. I absolutely love it. For more abstract episodes like Pac-Man, you took them straight to the scripting process. What determines whether a story follows a traditional path or goes directly into a script?

Dave Wilson: I mean, the traditional route is to present a script to professionals. We did about four or five rounds of pitching on Pac-Man, but there wasn’t really anything we felt was right, and we took a lot of ingredients from pitching. Tim and JT Petty, our head writer, did some work on the script. But honestly, there’s a moment when you’re reading a story and it’s like some kind of light bulb goes off and that’s it.

Have you ever seen Pac-Man, it’s weird — and I think in the best way possible — but I would even say, I think if someone reads this story on the page, and you look at what Victor and Alfredo, the directors, Headless, did, I don’t think it’s even that script yet. Yeah, but they really gave it a life of its own. And I remember when that story reel came from them, I don’t think it’s changed at all since it came out. It was like, ‘Holy shit, this is amazing.’ It’s so strange.

It felt like we were destroying people’s childhoods with that episode. All it needed was a really, really strong voice, and they killed it. So it was a process that I don’t think followed a typical path, but we knew that episode needed a strong filmmaker, and even the director’s approach was incredible for that. They referenced Mandy. Like, Mandy and Pac-Man don’t seem like a good fit as a creative touchstone, but it was awesome. It worked.

Restricting the war hammer The episode’s story was a unique challenge for the duo

“We talk about it as a violent totem…”

Now the first episode of the series is war hammer. It’s amazing for the fans out there, I think they’re going to love it. You mentioned that war hammerThe episode has a unique tone. Can you share more about what sets this apart from other episodes in the series?

Dave Wilson: I accept, exactly as I ordered. I think it’s very difficult with an IP like Warhammer, which has been around for about 40 years, to choose which race and which chapter, etc., etc. So what we hoped to do was, “Let’s embody the tone and spirit of what it means to be in the bleak darkness of the distant future.” But because it varies from others, I think we don’t try to tell a very specific story about an event in a time and place.

It was more like an emotional [point]. We talk about it as a violent totem for what Warhammer is. And to their credit, Games Workshop was very much on board with this idea, because they understand how we would be of service to all of our fans, across all of these chapters. In the way it varies, I think in other cases, like Exodus and franchises that were establishing themselves, we want to be a little more specific and play a little more to the line that they were setting for themselves.

The duo sees Secret level Evolving with future seasons (and without long waits)

“…we will take bigger risks than in a $150 million video game adaptation.”

Now. Tim, considering the dynamic world of gaming, how do you see Secret level evolving in the future?

Tim Miller: I think we could do a lot more of that, even in the format we’ve created, but I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t do all kinds of different structures, like miniseries. There’s a world where you could make three 20-minute episodes that tell almost movie material, or you could focus on a certain tone, like “This is for adults only” or “This is for a certain type of movie.” . audience for that game.”

And it doesn’t have to be this two-year between seasons kind of thing. We hope to do a lot more under the Secret Level banner, and because there are so many other different ways to explore the gaming world, the more we work on the program, the more possibilities we see. I think people will come up and suggest things to us too, in a way of, “Hey, could you do this?”

Dave Wilson: And it’s also one of the things that – and we challenged ourselves from the beginning – was like, let’s take bigger risks than we would on a $150 million video game adaptation. There are things to serve when you spend that much money, and I think we really need to take risks, like Armored Core and Pac-Man. I think it would be difficult to make a $100 million Pac-Man movie the way we did, but we hope these are tests for bolder statements about what video game annotations can be.

On Secret level

Secret Level is a new adult animated anthology series that features original stories set in the worlds of some of the world’s most beloved video games. From the creative minds behind LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS, each of the 15 episodes is a celebration of gaming and gamers.

Source: Screen Rant Plus