The Electric State

Netflix spent $320 million and still landed on a Razzie ballot.

The Russo brothers' robot road movie hit Netflix on March 14, 2025. Critics treated it like a write-off. People opened it anyway.

The rights flip.

Universal won the package in December 2020 with Millie Bobby Brown attached and Anthony and Joe Russo directing from a Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely script of Simon Stalenhag's 2018 illustrated novel. By June 2022 the theatrical window was gone. Netflix took the film. Chris Pratt signed on. Michelle Yeoh was in, then scheduling conflicts pulled her out. Ke Huy Quan, her Everything Everywhere All at Once co-star, replaced her. , ,

Atlanta filming started in October 2022 under the working title Stormwind. Production paused on November 4 after a crew member died in an off-set car crash. They wrapped in early February 2023, then came back for reshoots from March 20 to April 5, 2024. Deadline later put the budget at $320 million, which would place it among the most expensive movies ever made. Alan Silvestri scored it, his third Russo job after Infinity War and Endgame. ^[1],

The book they did not make.

Stalenhag's novel is lonely, muted, and elliptical. Anthony Russo told a New York Comic-Con panel the story was "very opaque" and "kind of hard to understand," so they used the art as a springboard for a new plot. Joe Russo described the premise as a 1990s in which late-1950s Disney animatronics became sentient and demanded equal rights. Inverse already flagged the first stills as muddy next to the book. Fans who wanted the melancholy original heard that as a confession. ,

Chris Pratt told The Hollywood Reporter he had planned to take time off, then read the script. "It's so original, it's a huge swing," he said. "I was moved to tears reading." At the Madrid premiere Brown hoped the film would be "a wake-up call to understand our relationship with technology." Pratt, a child of the 1990s, said he was excited to load the movie with pop-culture leftovers from that decade. ^[5],

Rotten Tomatoes settled at 14 percent from 158 reviews. Metacritic gave it 30. The consensus said it lumbered "like a giant automaton." It still debuted at No. 1 on Netflix's English films chart with 25.2 million views in the first tracked week, then 22.5 million the next. Netflix later reported 74.2 million views and 158.2 million hours in the first half of 2025. Kids' Choice nominations for Pratt and Brown. Razzie nominations for Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay. ^[1]

The joke writes itself. Kids' Choice nods for the stars. Razzie nods for the brothers and the MCU writers. Seventy-four million clicks on a book they admitted they did not film.