Mr. Peanut is the 'Jimmy Carter' of the robot uprising in Chris Pratt's “The Electric State,” Russo brothers say

Chris Pratt is tapping back into his Guardians of the Galaxy roots for a new movie from the Russo brothers — but no, this has nothing to do with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It's time to enter The Electric State, based on Simon Stålenhag's beloved illustrated novel of the same name. Marvel directors Joe and Anthony Russo's upcoming Netflix movie stars Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown in the post-war aftermath of a failed robot uprising. While the film is set in an alternate version of the '90s, Pratt's smuggler character Keats' shaggy blond locks and facial hair harken back to an even earlier decade.

"His character is someone who suffered trauma during the war, so he's frozen in time," Joe tells Entertainment Weekly for our 2025 movie preview. "He's really a child of the early '80s/late '70s when he was happier, so that's how he dresses, and his haircut is reflective of that as well. Everything in his life is reminiscent of a time prior to the one that he is in, a past that brought him more happiness than the present."

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Meanwhile, Brown found happiness playing into the '90s style with her character Michelle. "I love the '90s, so I was very excited," the Stranger Things star tells EW. "I love the makeup, the hair, the style. I am obsessed with it."

Style aside, the Russos are excited for audiences to see how they've adapted author Stålenhag's powerful imagery into a big-screen sci-fi epic. "It's an action-adventure comedy, but it's also very poignant, and there are intense themes in it reminiscent of the tones that we played with in the work we did with Marvel," Joe says. "It's a big, commercially appealing film that hopefully touches on some intense subjects in a way that gives you a very rich storytelling experience."

The movie begins after the robot war has ended in a decisive victory for humanity, and everyone is still picking up the pieces. "Millie plays a character who has lost her family in the war but realizes her brother may still be alive," Anthony says. "So she begins a cross-country road trip through the American West looking for her brother. Along the way, she encounters the character played by Chris Pratt, who becomes an ally to her in that quest. They become partners in crime, so to speak."

The unlikely duo are both "broken characters in a broken world," Joe adds. "But they find something in each other that inspires them through the story, and they help heal each other."

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Pratt says that The Electric State was "one of the best scripts" he had ever read. "It was wildly original...[and] so inventive, and so, so beautiful," he says. "To be able to join a project like this and to work with the Russo brothers again [after Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame], to work with Millie, of whom I've been a huge fan, was just something I had to do."

The directors tease that both actors bring something new with their performances while also playing to their strengths. "You're going to see more drama from Chris than you usually get, but also his signature sense of humor," Joe says. "And you're going to see more humor from Millie, but also her signature sense of drama."

Brown reveals that she got to do a lot of improv during filming with Pratt, which was something she hadn't done much of on past projects. "I typically stick to the script," she says. "So many times on set, we'd start the scene and just see where it would go. And I had to learn quickly to match Chris' energy and reciprocate that, so it taught me a lot. He’s probably the funniest person I’ve ever met...it’s been really nice going toe-to-toe with him. Most days, I just laugh from start to finish."

The Russos are also ready for audiences to fall in love with the oppressed robot characters, voiced by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Brian Cox, Jenny Slate, Hank Azaria, Colman Domingo, and Alan Tudyk. It also helps that the robots have very familiar faces.

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"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 reveals. "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."

One of the most prominent robots in the story is Mr. Peanut, who led his fellow bots through their failed war. "Mr. Peanut is, in a lot of ways, the Atticus Finch or the Jimmy Carter of the robots," Joe says. "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."

Brown is most excited for viewers to meet her favorite robot, Mrs. Scissors. "She made me so happy," the actor says.

Rounding out the rest of the cast are humans played by Stanley Tucci, Ke Huy Quan, Jason Alexander, and Giancarlo Esposito. Calling Tucci one of their favorite actors of all time, the Russos reveal that he plays a brilliant scientist who created the technology that allowed humans to win the war against the robots.

"It's that technology that then moves into peacetime, and that ends up causing some complications for humanity," Anthony explains. "The movie is then very much about how all of these characters deal with that complication."

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Quan plays another scientist who helped create the technology that saved humankind, but he also has a surprising connection "to the family tragedy that Millie's character is dealing with." Alexander joins the fold as a "corrupt foster parent" tasked with taking care of Millie's character at the beginning of the movie. And Esposito stars as a "fearsome robot fighter during the war who was responsible for running down a lot of rogue robots who were still at large after the war," Anthony adds. "He has a wonderful and surprising arc."

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Amidst all the action and adventure, the Russos wanted to deliver the same powerful message from original author Stålenhag's illustrations. "The dangers of technology, but also its value to society, is really profound in the images," Joe says. "He was dealing with themes that were very resonant to us, and are still very resonant to us, which allowed for us to find our own path through the story."

Anthony adds that the movie explores "the relationship between humanity and technology and the fact that, in many ways, we can expand upon and discover our humanity in technology, and in a lot of ways, we can lose what makes us human in our lives."

"It's exactly the kind of movie we love to make," Joe says.

The Electric State premieres March 14 on Netflix.

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