Directors Joe and Anthony Russo are expanding the cast of the film adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s The Electric State, their next film for Netflix, with Giancarlo Esposito (The Mandalorian) and Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once). Anthony Mackie (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and Billy Bob Thornton (The Gray Man) have also signed on in voice roles.

Set in an alternative America in the mid-1990s, The Electric State stars Millie Bobby Brown as a young girl traveling across the country in the wake of a civil war between humanity and the robots that once served them, looking to find her missing brother. Chris Pratt costars as a smuggler she meets along the way; Stanley Tucci and Jason Alexander round out the cast.

Esposito will play an antagonist known as the Marshall, a robotic drone manned by Esposito’s character remotely and tasked with hunting down the robot aiding Brown’s character on her quest. (The drone is played on set by a performance-capture actor; Esposito will shoot his side later in production.) Quan will play a doctor that Brown’s character needs to find; he’s taking over the role from his Everything Everywhere All at Once costar Michelle Yeoh, who had to depart the film due to scheduling conflicts. Mackie and Thornton will each voice sentient robots in the film. Mackie’s character is a sidekick for Pratt’s, while Thornton voices a key figure in the civil war.

The film is currently in production in Atlanta, with an eye to debut in 2024.

The Russo brothers’ adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s acclaimed The Electric State has begun filming in Atlanta, Georgia. The film, which will star Millie Bobbie Brown and Chris Pratt, focuses on an orphaned teenager who attempts to search for her brother as she travels across the American West with a mysterious robot and an eccentric drifter. While no premiere date has been set yet, Netflix acquired the rights to the film earlier this year.

Visionary artist and author Simon Stålenhag has joined Goodbye Kansas Studios in producing a game trailer for Funcom’s Dune Awakening, a game inspired by the new feature film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classical sci-fi novel series. Stålenhag thus makes his debut as a game trailer director.

“The collaboration with Goodbye Kansas Studios and Funcom to create this trailer was an incredible opportunity for me to explore a tiny sliver of the legendary Dune universe. I really enjoy working with Goodbye Kansas Studios since they immediately understand what I’m looking for even though my ideas might seem strange at times. Every part of this project was a delight for me – from concepts, mocap to compositing, and to work on something as deep and rich as the Dune universe was nothing short of an honor and privilege,” says Simon Stålenhag.

Actors Michelle Yeoh, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander, Brian Cox and Jenny Slate are set to join the already impressive cast of the Russo Brother’s adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s The Electric State, starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.
Production is set to start this fall.

Read the full article in Deadline by clicking “Read More” below.

Netflix has successfully acquired the rights to the film adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s graphic novel titled The Electric State, which will be directed by Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo. The screenplay is written by Endgame scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and leading the sci-fi drama film is Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, who has been attached to the project since 2020.

The film is set in a retro-futuristic past, where an orphaned teenager (Brown) traverses the American West with a sweet but mysterious robot and an eccentric drifter in search of her younger brother. Production is scheduled to begin this fall.

The official soundtrack to Simon Stålenhag’s narrative art novel The Labyrinth, composed by Simon himself, has now been released by Lakeshore Records.
Lakeshore Records is the four-time Grammy Nominated record label behind critically acclaimed soundtracks such as Drive, Stranger Things and Moonlight among many others.

Please listen to the soundtrack by clicking ‘Read More’ below.

NPR, America’s National Public Radio, raises Simon Stålenhag as one of seven authors who’ve changed and elevated the sci-fi genre during the last decade, exploring the new format of bite-sized yet profound fiction.

Jason Sheehan, the journalist behind the article, goes on to write the following about Stålenhag and his debut title, Tales from the Loop:

“I love [Stålenhag] for his words. The art is cool, no doubt. But the reason I keep three of his books on my desk at all times is because no other writer […] is better at telling huge stories in small spaces than Stalenhag. Tales From The Loop worldbuilds visually, but it comes alive for me in the small vignettes written into the margins. /…/ 143 words. A complete story, beautiful and haunting. And Stalenhag does this over and over and over again, on nearly every page. His work is both grounded and fantastical, perfectly suited to our modern tastes of ideas served in appetizer-sized portions. What’s more, Loop […] upended things both by proving the viability of crowd-funding in the increasingly siloed world of traditional publishing and presaged the boom we’re now seeing in genre flash and micro fiction.”

To read the full article and list on NPR’s website, just click “read more” below.

Simon Stålenhag’s debut title Tales from the Loop is the winner of the 2021 Kurd Lasswitz Award in the category ‘Best non-German SF work.’ The Kurd Lasswitz Award is an annual literary award for science fiction. Since its insitution 40 years ago, authors, translators, editors, publishers, graphic artists and journalists working professionally in the sci-fi genre in Germany, Austria and Switzerland have been voting on the best new releases from the previous year to decide the winning titles and authors.

The award ceremony is planned to take place during the 12th Penta-Con in Dresden, in November.

It is now official that Universal Pictures has landed the rights to the adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s international bestseller, The Electric State, and that Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things, Enola Holmes) is attached to star. Joe and Anthony Russo are on board to direct as well as to produce alongside Mike Larocca and Andy and Barbara Muschietti. The film will be written by AGBO’s Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (Captain America: Winter Soldier, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame).

Set in an alternative future, The Electric State tells the story of a teenage girl (Millie Bobby Brown) who realizes that a strange but sweet robot who comes to her has actually been sent by her missing brother.  She and the robot set out to find the brother in an imaginative world of humans mixing with all manner of robots, uncovering a grand conspiracy in the process.

To read more about the announcement in Deadline Hollywood, just click “Read more” below.

A world covered in ruins and ash. An alien phenomenon has ravaged Earth’s atmosphere and forced its few survivors underground. But there are still secrets left to be uncovered. Matt, Sigrid and Charlie leave the safety of their enclave to go on an expedition into the wastelands of the surface world. During their journey, they will be forced to confront their hidden pasts from the time before civilization fell.

Simon Stålenhag is the internationally lauded artist and author of The Electric State, Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood. Now, Stålenhag returns with a hauntingly chilling tale of the ultimate cost of survival: The Labyrinth.

Simon Stålenhag – the No. 1 bestselling author and illustrator of Tales From the Loop and The Electric State – makes his highly anticipated debut as a director today. His first production is nothing less than the music video for Geronimo, the Grammy Award-nominated artist Duvchi’s new single from his upcoming album, This Kind of Ocean. The dreamily romantic pop / R&B tune Geronimo features the vocals of Nadia Nair, hailed by Clash Magazine and MTV as an “artist of the future to look out for.”

In the music video, Stålenhag also pairs up with the talented visual effects and post production team at Goodbye Kansas Studios (The Walking Dead, Chernobyl) to give life to everything from the video’s protagonist – the robotic yet dove-like figure of “Hector,” created by Stålenhag – to the fantastical beasts lured from the deep by the spellbinding tune.

To read more about Simon Stålenhag and Duvchi’s Geronimo, just click “Read More” below.

Tales From the Loop, the TV series based on Simon Stålenhag’s debut work of the same title, along with its sequel Things From the Flood, will premiere worldwide on Amazon Prime April 3.

Accompanying the announcement of the official release date is the above series trailer, as well as key art created by Simon Stålenhag himself.

The series Tales From the Loop will explore the town and people who live above “The Loop,” a machine built to unlock and explore the mysteries of the universe – making things possible that were previously relegated only to science fiction. In this fantastical mysterious town poignant human tales are told that bare universal emotional experiences while drawing on the intrigue of genre storytelling.

The show stars Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Paul Schneider (Parks and Recreation), Daniel Zolghadri (Eighth Grade), Duncan Joiner (Waco) and Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes, Game of Thrones).

To read more about the series, visit IndieWire.com here, or Deadline Hollywood here.