Before Joe and Anthony Russo return to the Marvel family for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, they will unleash The Electric State. Based on the illustrated novel by Simon Stålenhag, the film takes place in an alternate, retro-futuristic version of the 1990s where sentient robots, who once peacefully served among humans, now live in exile following a failed uprising.
“The robots in this alternate universe came from Walt Disney and Disneyland — the animatronics that he created gained a sentience, were put into the workforce, and became worker bots, service bots, and marketing bots,” Joe revealed while speaking with Entertainment Weekly. “But they retained that Disney-esque quality to keep them appealing and non-threatening to humans. So you have this tapestry of really interesting, cartoonish-looking robots who are very complex characters in their own right, who are on their own journey of discovery.“
The Electric State features plenty of robots, including Mr. Peanut, who led the robots during their failed uprising. “Mr. Peanut is, in a lot of ways, the Atticus Finch or the Jimmy Carter of the robots,” Joe explained. “He’s the most intelligent, the most progressive, the most humane. He has now secreted himself away in an area of the country called the Exclusion Zone, where any of the surviving robots were rounded up and put into [after the war]. It’s a large-scale prison that covers several hundred square miles of the American Southwest.“
The official synopsis for The Electric State reads: “The Electric State is a spectacular adventure from the directors of Avengers: Endgame set in an alternate, retro-futuristic version of the 1990s. Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) stars as Michelle, an orphaned teenager navigating life in a society where sentient robots resembling cartoons and mascots, who once served peacefully among humans, now live in exile following a failed uprising. Everything Michelle thinks she knows about the world is upended one night when she’s visited by Cosmo, a sweet, mysterious robot who appears to be controlled by Christopher — Michelle’s genius younger brother whom she thought was dead. Determined to find the beloved sibling she thought she had lost, Michelle sets out across the American southwest with Cosmo, and soon finds herself reluctantly joining forces with Keats (Chris Pratt, Guardians of the Galaxy), a low-rent smuggler, and his wisecracking robot sidekick, Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie). As they venture into the Exclusion Zone, a walled-off corner in the desert where robots now exist on their own, Keats and Michelle find a strange, colorful group of new animatronic allies — and begin to learn that the forces behind Christopher’s disappearance are more sinister than they ever expected.“
The Electric State will debut on Netflix on March 14, 2025.