Amazon is celebrating some of the world’s most beloved video games with the launch of “Secret Level,” an animated anthology series for Prime Video that tells 15 original short stories that are set in the worlds and pay homage to titles including “Pac-Man,” “Mega-Man,” “Unreal Tournament,” “Dungeons & Dragons” and “Warhammer 40,000.”
“We wanted to represent the broad spectrum of gaming, from indie, nostalgia titles to Triple A blockbusters, but also past, present and future games, horror games, science fiction, fantasy. So we wanted that diversification of something for everybody,” executive producer and supervising director Dave Wilson told TheWrap.
Creator and executive producer Tim Miller said the project is “inextricably interwined” with another animated series he’s known for: “Love, Death & Robots”
“It took longer than it should have, but I suddenly came around to the idea of, ‘Hey, let’s take our core business of video games, trailers that we’ve doing for 30 years, and give it the Love, Death and Robots treatment. So it was literally like, what if we just did Love, Death and Video Games?,” Miller told TheWrap. “And we already have this relationship established with all these game companies over the years, and they trust us as good collaborators, so why not ask to borrow their characters and their worlds and tell original stories in them? It’s a gross simplification, but a lot of people saw the interesting concept and allowed us to borrow their stuff, their toys.”
“The difference with [Love, Death & Robots] is it’s just stories that nobody’s heard of most likely and I pick them,” he added. “These guys are all competitors mostly, so we have to get them all on the same train, going in the same direction.”
Wilson admitted that the getting all of their collaborators on board was trickiest part of tackling the series.
“The show is different. There isn’t anything like it. So I think when you when you go to folks and you say, ‘Hey, we want you all to come together in celebration of gaming and gamers the world over,’ if there’s not something to point at, it can make people nervous. So I think it took some convincing,” Wilson said. “Many of the episodes in our series are collaborators that we’ve worked with over the last 10, 20, 30 years, because they trust us that we’re not just going to trample their IP. Doing anything new is never easy. So we’re appreciative of all our friends that they came together.”
“Secret Level” features an all-star voice cast from the worlds of both Hollywood and gaming, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Hart, Keanu Reeves, Gabriel Luna, Temuera Morrison, Ariana Greenblatt, Heaven Hart, Emily Swallow, Ricky Whittle, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Merle Dandridge, Claudia Doumit, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Clive Standen, Laura Bailey and Michael Beach.
“A lot of them have worked with me before on different things. So it’s great to have them come back. It’s like seeing old friends. Games are such a big universal media consumption these days that a lot of people that are in movies or movie stars are also gamers, and they want to be involved in that world,” Miller said. “Arnold is happy to be in anything because he’s such a gregarious guy, Keanu loves animation and Kevin Hart is great guy who plays video games too. But aside from the movie stars, we’ve done lots of video game trailers over the years, and we work with a lot of the voice talent in the industry out here. It’s a great group of people and you have fun every time you go and do it and they all know each other. When you get them all together, it’s really a great experience.”
Wilson praised Reeves as “wonderful” and “generous,” recalling how the actor worked long hours to ensure the show had everything it needed from him for its “Armored Core” episode despite sustaining an injury.
“A few days before the shoot I got an email, and he was like, ‘Hey, I’m a little injured.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, this is the point where he backs out.’ But no, he was like, ‘I’m going to show up’ and went through everything. He shot for 13 hours straight to make sure we got everything we needed,” Wilson said. “It is so wonderful to know that there are the folks out there at the sort of apex of their fame and careers who are still willing to do things just for the love of making awesome material.”
According to the pair, it took three years to create “Secret Level” from start to finish. Along the way, one of the games featured in the series – Concord – would be shut down during the production process, as well as the animation and VFX studio Axis Animation.
“We were finished with the episode. There was a lot of community comments like, ‘are they gonna dump the episode?’ And I’m like, ‘I have no idea why we would do that,” Miller said. “It would have been an insult to an incredible legacy for an amazing animation studio to just shelve an episode that they poured their hearts into. It would have been insult to injury because all the artists and animators worked on the episode, which is beautiful and fun and the characters are super cool. So why not have it out in the world?”
“I just wish everybody would realize that it’s a bunch of artists and good people trying to make something interesting. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and people tend to make it some kind of personal quest, or feel like it’s an affront to them personally,” he added. “But they’re just artists trying to do a great job, and they’re super nice, and I’m sorry to see anybody fail and that that, I think it’s not quite worthy of some of the toxicity around it.”
In addition to diving into individual stories, Secret Level’s finale, dubbed “Playtime,” pulls characters from various PlayStation entities.
“I grew up in South Africa and gaming was not cool in the early 80s and 90s, it’s a very niche community. And I remember PlayStation came out with this Double Life commercial, and for the first time, it made me feel really a part of a cool community of people that are diverse and different and we don’t have to be closeted away. PlayStation made it cool to be a gamer, at least for me, and I’ve always thought their titles are these meaningful cinematic adventures. I’ve always loved that format of storytelling,” Wilson said. “What gives stories meaning is that they take us places and fuel our imaginations, they trap and addict you. Our choices matter because they are finite and I think great games acknowledge that.”
He emphasized that the IP they chose to use was a “very considered” conversation with Sony and that they didn’t want to confuse audiences with active titles in development.
“Our only regret with that episode was we hope people don’t go, ‘Oh my god, there’s a whole God of War episode’ because they see Kratos in the trailers,” Miller added. “I don’t want to disappoint people. I want them to understand it’s supposed to be a whole PlayStation buffet there.”
All episodes in Season 1 are available to stream on Prime Video now
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