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January ’25 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 346).
The elevator pitch for Blur Studio’s Secret Level is it’s the video game version of its hit anthology series Love, Death + Robots.
“Eventually, we got around to, ‘Well, why don’t we just play to our strengths and do the same thing in the world of games?’ And here we are,” says Tim Miller, Blur’s co-founder and executive producer on Secret Level.
Developed in collaboration with Amazon MGM Studios, Secret Level is a series of 15 adult animated shorts telling stories adapted from video games. Episodes are based on everything from recent hits such as New World: Aeternum, The Outer Worlds and Exodus to classics like Warhammer 40,000, Crossfire, Dungeons & Dragons — and, yes, Pac-Man. Adding to the excitement is a voice cast that includes Keanu Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kevin Hart. The series will premiere two episodes each week starting December 10.
Surprising Package
The results are sure to surprise fans and newcomers alike. In the New World episode, Schwarzenegger pokes fun at himself as a dense and headstrong strongman whose confidence in his right to the throne is belied by his ineptitude in battle. Time’s flexibility, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, plays havoc with a father’s pursuit of his long-lost daughter in the Exodus episode. And things get very dark, very violent and strangely poetic when Warhammer 40,000 arrives.
Good movie and TV adaptations of video games have been rare for several reasons. Some popular games focus on gameplay over story, leaving little depth or meaning for an adaptation to explore. In recent years, games have also built up reservoirs of characters and stories that are too complex for a single narrative to convey. Other games are so customizable it’s difficult to build a representative story.
Secret Level took a cue from Love, Death + Robots in developing ideas and pitches: A story is a story, and a fully developed story is helpful no matter what medium it is expressed in, Miller says.
A short story or novel “has to paint the picture in the mind of the reader completely, and I just find that a much better reading experience,” he says, citing short-story anthology books based on franchises such as Warhammer 40,000 or the Alien movies. “I can’t say I had a big brainstorm; it was more of recognizing how the industry works and can work.”
Exec producer and supervising director Dave Wilson agrees there’s a lot of extra information in a short story that won’t make it into a screenplay. “Those short stories are filled with all sorts of color and detail and backstory and nuance that doesn’t make it into the screenplay that, I feel, is incredibly informative — not as it translates one-to-one on screen but in terms of who the characters are and where they came from,” he says. “That can influence small details in your story, even if they’re not in the screenplay.”
Many screenwriters who worked on Love, Death + Robots came to Secret Level, forming what Wilson calls a “mini writers’ room” and pitching ideas based on creative guides from the game developers. “We come up with an idea, we pick a winning pitch, and that becomes a short story that we then adapt to a screenplay,” Wilson says.
The process helps ensure a diverse array of stories for an equally diverse range of games. Wilson says some of the more established franchises, such as Pac-Man, were willing to take greater risks. “Ones that are newer, like Exodus for example, they’re still getting their feet underneath them in terms of what their story is about and who the characters are, so we’re a little more faithful to the narrative of the game.”
Deciding which games to adapt was a complicated process. Miller says there was no shortage of games he believed would work, but the developers had to be open to the idea of an adaptation and willing and able to license the rights. “I wish I could explain it in a concise way, but a lot of this is who’s got a new game coming out next year and who is willing to take a chance on this new format,” he says.
‘I don’t want to tell the same stories with less people; I want to tell bigger stories.’
— Exec producer/show creator Tim Miller
A trailer released a month before the show’s Dec. 10 premiere surprised fans by confirming there is an episode based on Concord. Developers Sony and Firewalk Studios touted Concord as the next blockbuster gaming franchise, only for the lavishly produced game to flop upon its late-summer release. The Secret Level episode was already in the works and will air despite the plug being pulled on the game.
“We signed them up two-and-a-half years ago, or three years ago, and they were some of the nicest, most creative and genuinely enthusiastic people that we worked with, and we were sad that the game came out and fared the way it did,” Miller says.
The animation of each episode reflects the game it’s based on, ranging from slightly cartoony to intensely realistic. Although Blur was the overall producer, each episode had its own director and worked with teams of thousands of artists, many of whom also work for studios that would be considered the distinguished competition.
“The challenging part is just the immense amount of coordination between all those partners making one series,” Wilson says.
One of the more interesting challenges was the episode based on Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament. Wilson says Epic wanted its Unreal Engine rendering tool to be used in creating the show. “That’s exactly what it is,” he says. “We even took it one step further and did everything in Engine, including the animation.”
The work was difficult, frustrating at times, and required a lot of problem-solving, but ultimately, it was rewarding and satisfying. “Every day, you get on a call with one of those studios who would show you their work, and it’s like Christmas,” Wilson says.
Miller sees the advancements in real-time technology and artificial intelligence as positives that will broaden the canvas of stories that can be told.
“I don’t want to tell the same stories with less people; I want to tell bigger stories,” he says. “There are stories and things that Blur’s developing that we couldn’t do two or three years ago, or even think about doing because they’re so big in scope and complexity that nobody would give us the money to do it.”
Arcade Fire
Then there’s Pac-Man. Fans of the classic arcade game will likely either love or hate the Secret Level version, but either way it’s definitely a unique take on the brand. “One of the things that I love about the series is if we were to pitch that as a $100 million movie to a studio, no one’s gonna make it, so it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s see what people are interested in,’” Wilson says. “But I will say, it wasn’t exclusively us — we were challenged by the developer to come up with something that would elicit a reaction like, ‘What the fuck did they do to Pac-Man?’”
And with game adaptations still largely undiscovered country, more Secret Level is entirely possible.
“There’s a deck with 10 seasons worth of material,” Miller says. “If we did get a chance to do more, we’ll do it even better because we’ve learned a lot in the process.”
Secret Level premieres on Prime Video on December 10. The second part of the season drops on December 17.
Secret Level Episode Games List:
- 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
- Warhammer 40,000
