Prime Video launched the highly anticipated adult-animated anthology series “Secret Level” on Dec. 10.
“Secret Level” showcases the voices of a star-studded cast including Arnold Schwarzenegger (“The Terminator Franchise”), Kevin Hart (“Jumanji”), Keanu Reeves (“John Wick”), Temuera Morrison (“The Book of Boba Fett,” “Chief of War”), and Ariana Greenblatt (“Barbie”).
It also features the voices of Heaven Hart, Emily Swallow (“The Mandalorian”), Gabriel Luna (“The Last of Us,” “Terminator: Dark Fate”), Ricky Whittle (“American Gods,” “Land of Bad”), Patrick Schwarzenegger (“The White Lotus”), Merle Dandridge (“The Last of Us”), Claudia Doumit (“The Boys”), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (“Lost,” “The Union”), Clive Standen (“Vikings,” “The Morning Show”), Laura Bailey (“The Legend of Vox Machina”), and Michael Beach (“The Perfect Couple,” “Tulsa King”).
"Secret Level" (Prime Video)
"Secret Level" creator and executive producer Tim Miller (right) and supervising director and executive producer Dave Wilson during the interview with Manila Bulletin (Screenshot from Prime Video video)
From Amazon MGM Studios and Blur Studio, creator of “Love, Death + Robots,” are 15 episodes and groundbreaking animation.
The anthology series features stories based on 15 video games. These are Armored Core, Concord, Crossfire, Dungeons & Dragons, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World: Aeternum, PAC-MAN, PlayStation, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament and Warhammer 40,000.
In an interview with Manila Bulletin, creator and executive producer Tim Miller and supervising director and executive producer Dave Wilson discussed how “Secret Level” was born and how they cast the stars for the series.
Miller directed “Deadpool,” “Terminator: Dark Fate,” created and directed “Love, Death & Robots,” and executive produced “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Borderlands.”
He said “Secret Level” was created based on the most popular video games.
“It's pretty simple actually. I just eventually got around to the idea of saying what if we just made ‘Love, Death & Robots’ in video games. I love the short story format and Blur [Studio], my company, had a long history of making video game trailers and so let's put them all together and just ask if we could borrow uh the really great characters and great worlds of the world's most popular video games and tell stories in them,” said Miller.
"Secret Level" (Prime Video)
Wilson, who directed “Bloodshot” starring Vin Diesel, said it took about three years to complete “Secret Level.”
“I would say a year of development as in like stories and design work and things like that, and then probably two years of actual animation like we didn't start all the episodes at the same time. I would [say] three years total, two years animation, production,” said Wilson.
Choosing which video game to include in “Secret Level” was a challenge.
“Have you ever seen those ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ dice with the eight sides? We rolled them,” Miller said in jest.
Wilson explained that it was “complicated.”
“It's an anthology series so we wanted something for everybody. But a lot of it are partners that we've…because it's something different and something new, a lot of the developers and publishers are folks we've worked with at Blur for the last 20, 30 years who trust us not to completely screw their IP up. So that and trying to get a well-rounded mix of fantasy or science fiction or nostalgia games or Triple-A titles so it's a complicated process. It's not like we just walked into the GameStop and picked IPs,” he said.
When asked to pick their personal favorite video games included in the series, Miller said, “I probably played Pac-Man the most but Unreal Tournament maybe.”
Wilson said he played the Unreal Tournament a lot, saying, ”My take, Warhammer is of all the…actually no. Pac-Man dates back the furthest but I remember like…I haven't actually played it in years but like the tabletop. But I remember, like the first time I came across the little tabletop figurines in Warhammer and how amazing they were. I have a long standing love with Warhammer.”
They also talked about how they convinced the actors including Reeves, Hart and Schwarzenegger to be a part of “Secret Level.”
“We took in each case one of their children hostaged, moved them to a secure location,” said Miller to which Wilson replied “that actually is mildly true with Heaven [Hart].”
“I did have Kevin Hart's daughter ‘hostaged’ because she was an intern at Blur. You know, we have good relationship with people we've worked with in the past and and in most of the cases that was true for all the movie stars with the exception of Keanu who happened to come down to talk about another project and I told him about this project and he's like man ‘I'd love to be in that’ and I'm like that's great because we have a part for you you can be a junkie mech pilot in Armored Core and oddly enough or not odd uh the movie stars like games just like most everybody likes games so they were happy to be part of the process or at least they pretended to be happy to be part of the process,” added Miller.
Schwarzenegger also agreed to be a part of the series.
“Well this is gonna sound like I was bragging or something but I was having breakfast with Arnold because I did the ‘Terminator’ movie. We're friendly,” said Miller.
Wilson said, “I got a video from breakfast which was Arnold saying ‘Dave, whatever you want me to do I'm in the series so like and we were in the writers room trying to come up with ideas for the episode so we pivoted and wrote an episode for Mr. Schwarzeneger that ended up being New World.”
Miller added, “But it was really just because he agreed to do something without understanding exactly what it was.”
Wilson and Miller said viewers can expect heartfelt stories from “Secret Level.”
“Bold, inventive and colorful,” said Wilson.
Miller said, “I think they're heartfelt stories. People are going to want to write them off that don't understand video games. They're going to go ‘oh it's just animation or it's just video game stories.’ But really, so many video games, the really great ones, have a really solid emotional core and which is why they're popular with people.”
“They resonate with people in some way and so we try and be true to what makes those games resonate in our story so people feel like it's just another way to experience the world that they fell in love with in the first place and if you haven't played the game, you're going to respond to that emotional core in a way that hopefully will make you go and play the game,” he added.
“Secret Level” is available exclusively on Prime Video in over 240 countries and territories worldwide starting Dec. 10 with additional episodes dropping on Dec. 17.
"Secret Level" (Prime Video)