Chris Pratt says the script for The Electric State moved him to tears

The Guardians of the Galaxy star reveals he was about to take some time off, but the story of this film inspired him to sign onto the project.

The trailer for The Electric State has finally dropped. Additionally, the Russo brothers and their stars, Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, have made an appearance at this year’s New York Comic Con to talk about their upcoming Netflix sci-fi film. The story of this film begins in July of 2017, when Free League launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a new narrative artbook from acclaimed artist and author Simon Stålenhag – a book called The Electric State.

The Hollywood Reporter reveals that while Chris Pratt spoke about his experience on the movie during the film’s panel, the story moved him so much that he rescheduled his plan to take time off so he could reunite with his Infinity War and Endgame directors for this project. Pratt explained, “It’s not the kind of thing that typically gets made to be a blockbuster-style movie like this. It’s so original, it’s a huge swing. I thought that these types of movies might be my last opportunity to be in a big movie like this. I have to look at every opportunity like that. And I did. It’s just such a great story. I was moved to tears reading.”

Anthony Russo would talk about the challenges of adapting the grand graphic novel into a two-hour movie, “We just looked at the images, and the story that he unfolds in the graphic novel. It is very opaque. It’s kind of hard to understand it. You get it in glimpses. You can tell there’s a much larger world behind what he’s telling you in the graphic novel that you can only guess at.” He explained, “You have to get much more specific about the narrative, so we had a great, great fun, sort of diving in and using his incredible artwork as inspiration to figure out what kind of story we can tell this world.”

The film’s setting is also a unique one, where it is technically a period piece in an alternate reality. Joe Russo said, “Imagine a 1990s where, in the late ’50s, Disney animatronics became sentient and then started demanding equal rights. That’s what, that’s where the war comes out. It cherry picks the ’90s in a way that supports that storytelling and supports the theme of the movie.” And Pratt added, “It’s a ‘90s that is reflective of our modern world.”

Our own Dave Arroyo got to attend this panel, so check out his pictures below!

The Electric State hits Netflix on March 14.

About the Author

E.J. is a News Editor at JoBlo, as well as a Video Editor, Writer, and Narrator for some of the movie retrospectives on our JoBlo Originals YouTube channel, including Reel Action, Revisited and some of the Top 10 lists. He is a graduate of the film program at Missouri Western State University with concentrations in performance, writing, editing and directing.