'The Electric State' Is the Russo Brothers' Most VFX-Heavy Project Ever... Including 'Avengers: Endgame' [Exclusive]

After their New York Comic Con panel for The Electric State, where they released a new trailer and shared exclusive content with the crowd, the Russo Brothers, Anthony and Joe, spoke exclusively with Collider's Steve Weintraub about their upcoming sci-fi adventure produced by AGBO and Netflix.

The Electric State is a star-powered adaptation of Simon Stålenhag's illustrated novel that tells the courageous story of a young girl, played in the film by Millie Bobby Brown, on a mission to track down her little brother. To make her way safely across a war-torn landscape, a "veteran of the human/robot war that precedes the film," Keats (Chris Pratt), accompanies her. The movie also features Giancarlo Esposito, Stanley Tucci, Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan, and Anthony Mackie.

After helming the two highest-grossing MCU films ever, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the Russo Brothers tell Collider The Electric State takes the cake on visual effects work, considering "90% of the characters in the movie are robots." They discuss the collaboration that went into bringing this epic story to life with its dreamy palette and dystopian alternate '90s universe, as well as the inspiration behind Pratt's unique look. In addition to exciting Electric State updates, they also share development statuses for multiple projects, including Citadel Season 2 and Extraction 3. Check out the full conversation in the video above or in the transcript below.

What's the Status of 'The Electric State'?

When I watch the new film, am I gonna cry about a robot getting hurt?

JOE RUSSO: [Laughs] It's certainly a complicated tone. You're gonna laugh and you're gonna cry in that movie.

ANTHONY RUSSO: I'll just say this: I cry about that in this movie.

I'm very nervous. I watched the trailer that just hit today, and I'm like, “Oh, I might be tearing up over a robot.”

JOE RUSSO: The robots in the film are more human than most of the humans in the movie. They're certainly very relatable. It's a lot of cutting edge technology we're using to bring them to life with some incredible animators and artists. It's some amazing actors playing those characters. This has really been a movie five years in the making because it's very ambitious. 90% of the characters in the movie are robots, so there's just a ton of work that went into that. They come off very dimensionalized and they can break your heart.

Where are you in the editing process? It comes out in March. We're now in October.

JOE RUSSO: We're down to the final mix.

ANTHONY RUSSO: We just finished recording the score with the amazing Alan Silvestri, the visual effects are done, and the sound mix is about another three weeks or a month. Then we’ll have a showable movie, but we're not going to show it until March.

Sure. People need to realize that even when you finish it, it then needs to be in other languages.

JOE RUSSO: There's a lot that goes into it.

You have to finish it by a certain point so it can come out around the world on the same day.

ANTHONY RUSSO: That's right. There's a lot of work to do.

You've done a lot of stuff throughout your career. Do you consider one of the shots in this film to be one of the hardest things you've ever done? I know that it's VFX-heavy, which is why it took so long in post.

ANTHONY RUSSO: It's a tough question. I don't know if I'd point out one single shot, but I will say this: we've worked with visual effects a lot in our movies. This has been the most amount of visual effects we've ever dealt with in a film. That was challenging itself in terms of creating that. Also, we were trying to do a very grounded real world that has a period feel to it, so we had to have a high level of fidelity in the visual effect work to create recognizable realism so that people would understand it as period.

It was a difficult film to execute. We had an amazing team. We couldn't be prouder of the work that everybody did. The design of the film is breathtaking. This movie is inspired by an incredible graphic novel by Simon Stålenhag. Our job was to do justice to his amazing artwork, and I hope that we did with the film.

I'm sure you guys have done some screenings for friends and family. What did you learn from those early screenings?

JOE RUSSO: This kind of movie is tough to screen because so much of it is in the visual effects. We always put people in a room to watch something, and what’s more important than soliciting opinions is feeling their energy in the room. You can feel when people are confused — they get a little restless — or when they're bored. It's an important part of the process because we make movies for audiences. It's important for us to see how people are reacting to the story and see where they're following it or not. This is very new and very dense mythology. We set the table for this new mythology in the first 10 minutes of the movie. I think the trickiest part was making sure people followed every aspect of that new mythology.

I watched the trailer, and I see what you guys are trying to accomplish, I can't compare it to another movie. Real Steel had some robots, but it wasn't the way this looks. Do you see this as really original, and is there anything you would compare it to?

ANTHONY RUSSO: That's one of the greatest things we could ever hear about something. When you have trouble comparing it to something, I feel like you're in a good spot as an artist. This movie does exist in a very strange original space. We're just very eager for people to experience that.

Will 'The Electric State' Be in Theaters?

I know it's coming to Netflix. Are there any plans for theatrical showings?

JOE RUSSO: There's no theatrical run attached to it. I'm sure we'll do some theater screenings of the film for fans, but it’s not intended for any theatrical release.

I'm hoping, because I live in LA, that maybe you guys will screen it at the Egyptian or in New York at the Paris.

JOE RUSSO: We'll absolutely do special screenings.

I would like to see your movie on a movie screen. Just throwing that out there.

JOE RUSSO: We'll do it just for you.

Thank you. I appreciate it. If you want to do a Collider screening, I'm pitching it right now.

JOE RUSSO: Done! Let's get that on the books. [Laughs]

Who Is Chris Pratt in 'The Electric State'?

Chris Pratt has a very unique look in this. He doesn't look like anything he's done before. Was it Chris's idea or was it yours?

JOE RUSSO: It was a combination. The movie is period; it's set in an alternate 1994. His character is a veteran of the human/robot war that precedes the film. He's a society dropout. He's dropped out and disconnected. He’s a product of the '80s. The early '80s was his heyday. So, his character is reflective of somebody who's a little bit frozen in time, because they've pulled away.

ANTHONY RUSSO: You have to ask Chris this story because he tells it way better than we can, but he did have a neighbor when he was a kid growing up that he based the character on. Apparently, he was living in this apartment complex in Alaska, and he would watch MTV on television, and then he would see his neighbor out in the backyard — his neighbor would wear skin-tight tiger print pants, and he had long bleached blonde hair, an electric guitar, and he would jump on a mini-trampoline. [Chris] goes, “I thought David Lee Roth was living in my apartment complex”. Anyway, this guy was part of his inspiration for the character.

As you know, I am a huge fan of the Extraction franchise. Please give me a good update on Extraction 3 .

JOE RUSSO: We're in the middle of working on that story right now. Hard at work. We're hoping to go into production on it next year.

Do you think it's definitely filming next year? Or is it a maybe?

JOE RUSSO: It's definitely filming next year. I'm just being cagey because it's more fun.

Have you figured out who the real boss at the end of Extraction 2 is? The one Idris [Elba] works for? Did you figure out who that character is?

JOE RUSSO: Yes, we know who that character is. It was built that way. If you like that relationship between Idris and Chris [Hemsworth], you're gonna enjoy Extraction 3.

'Citadel' Season 2 Will Release in Fall 2025

You're working on Citadel Season 2 right now. Are you directing all the episodes?

JOE RUSSO: I'm directing four of them. We have this other thing that we have to go do.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you if that other thing impacted your directing the whole season.

JOE RUSSO: No. This season builds to a giant climax. The last two episodes are very complicated, and it was gonna be impossible for me to prep them while I was directing the other episodes. It was a choice for quality. I felt it was better to bring in a really good friend of ours named Greg Yaitanes, who did a lot of the great episodes of the first season of The House of the Dragon and is an incredible director. He’s directing right now while we’re here, and he’s crushing it.

You're filming right now, so do you think Citadel Season 2 will be on next year?

JOE RUSSO: Yeah. It'll be out in the fall next year.

This Technology Could Change the Way Hollywood Tells Stories

I just used the Apple Vision Pro headset and watched Edward Berger's Submerged film.

JOE RUSSO: What was the experience like? Did you like it?

It was incredible being on the submarine like that. It's a whole new language of filmmaking that has yet to be figured out and explored. The thing that struck me the most was being at the All-Star Game and looking to my right and seeing Stephen Curry and his sneakers. I felt like I was there. This technology is clearly in its infancy, but it has the power to transport you anywhere. I know you're obsessed with technology...

JOE RUSSO: We love immersive storytelling, right? The direction that technology is heading will allow you to be more immersed than you have been in the past. There's a distancing effect between the way stories have been presented to people for the last 100 years in that it's on a wall, and it's away from you. The headset surrounds you with it. It almost becomes a full sensory experience. I think that's where it's going. That's where you're gonna see new stories being told in an immersive way that will combine even more of your senses on a deeper level than you've ever seen before.

I think a horror movie would give you a heart attack.

JOE RUSSO: I play VR horror games, and I have to stop after 30 minutes. My heartbeat is racing. It's very intense. There was an experience I had when we were working with Glenn Derry, who ran Fox Labs. This was like seven or eight years ago, and there was a VR experience that someone had created. Anthony and I put on the headsets and went into space. Something traumatic had happened, but it was a fantasy world, and it was a very simple exercise, but it was a woman crying in a spot where something had burned to the ground and there were bones there. It looked like a loved one had died. There wasn't a lot of context in the storytelling, but it was so powerful that I remember taking it off and going, “Wow, that might be one of the more intense experiences I've had in a story with no words.” I was blown away by it. I'm excited about what the future holds, and what technology can do for us on a storytelling level, as well as the way it will be able to capture our emotions.

The Electric State is scheduled to be released on Netflix on March 14, 2025. Click this link to watch the second half of our interview with the Russo Brothers, in which they give a full rundown on the status of Avengers: Doomsday.