Prime Video is releasing Secret Level next week, and the anthology series is based on different video game properties including Pac-Man, Mega Man, Sifu, Dungeon & Dragons, New World: Aeternum, Unreal Tournament, Armored Core, Warhammer 40K, The Outer Worlds and more. Behind the scenes are Executive Producer/Creator Tim Miller and Executive Producer Dave Wilson. The former is known for creating Love Death + Robots and directing the live-action Deadpool film starring Ryan Reynolds.
Nerd Reactor had the chance to chat with Miller and Wilson about the show, pushing the limits on video game adaptations, nostalgic appeal, putting a comedic take on Conan in a New World: Aeternum episode featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Capcom having more restrictions than Bandai Namco and more.
John Nguyen: Let’s rewind back. You’ve been doing the interviews today, right? And then you’re talking about the things you learn? Something about nostalgia. What is it?
Tim Miller: Well, when you make something like this, you can never fully guess how people are going to take it. I did guess. I thought that people would be more excited about the triple-A games and the current games and people really are. And I think those episodes are amazing, but it’s amazing how excited people are about the nostalgia games and the indie games. The nostalgia ones in particular, because I’m guessing that they just bring such fond memories forth of people entering this world of gaming, this community. People just have so many good memories of playing these games a long time ago.
Dave Wilson: What is Pac-Man? Again, we’ve struggled with that too. When you sit down and wonder, “What is Pac-Man? What’s going on in that Pac-Man universe, anyway?” So I think there’s this sort of big black box of concepts, and you don’t really know what’s going to come out the other side. And I think that sort of unknown is exciting to people. The conversation we were having was, I think, polarizing in that there are people who are going to expect a bright, cheerful, 8-bit experience that they may have experienced when they were playing Pac-Man, or they may have experienced the one that we did. And so we made an episode out of it.
Was Bandai Namco all in for that?
Dave Wilson: To put a fine point on that – that episode is more theirs than ours.
Wow, wow! Whose idea was it?
Dave Wilson: They got on a call, and they’re speaking in Japanese, and then the translator confirmed what they just said. And then the mission statement was, “We would like audiences to wonder what the **** they did with Pac-Man.” And so there were a few more specifics beyond that. But other than that, we distilled down a lot about what makes Pac-Man Pac-Man. We brought in authors, and we went through this pitch process of eliciting ideas from all our favorite science fiction and fantasy authors. It all felt too timid and safe. And then eventually, J. T. Petty, our head writer, went away to his woodshed one weekend and came back with the script that is Pac-Man. JT actually writes for a lot of video games too. He was the writer of Outlast Trials and so he loves all of that stuff, right? He came back, and there was a line from our discussion stuck in his head, which was, “Yeah, you can eat them, but never their eyes.” And I think if there was a line that inspired it. It was probably that.
Outlast Trials to Pac-Man. It’s very fitting with just the episode, just how dark it is. There are so many episodes, but as you mentioned, the Pac-Man one, that’s going to have a lot of people talking. Let’s go with Sifu. It’s short, it’s violent, and I feel like it’s more violent than the actual game. The game is pretty violent, but this one has more blood and throat-cutting and all that. I guess there was no limit for you guys, right?
Tim Miller: There was.
Dave Wilson: There are. Some of our partners. The Mega Man guys were like, “Could you please not pull any heads off?” Someone at Comic-Con before we released anything was like, “So the Mega Man episode. You guys made Love Death + Robots, right? Is Mega Man going to rip heads off of people?” And I said, “No, he’s not really going to do that.” It was a range of violence.
With Sifu, in particular, they were fine with it within reason. I wish we could release the stunt viz. Our stunt team, led by Wayne Douglas, did that corridor fight. I said, “We want to do a two-minute fight in this glass-bottom corridor.” And they made it six or seven minutes because stunt guys can’t control themselves. And if you want to see violence, that thing is violent. They’re amazing if you’ve seen them. They throw in all their crew, they film it all, and throw in rudimentary visual effects, like eyeballs popping out of heads and intestines they disembowel. But we toned it back from that. We showed it to Sloclap, and we were like, “We’re gonna remove that part and this part and that…
Tim Miller: We should put that on the site. Why can’t we put that on the site?
Dave Wilson: Yeah, I think we talked about it with Amazon. We pushed it as far as we could go in the episodes because we knew there were some that we couldn’t have. We’ve wanted to take some chances.
And then one of the funnier episodes, the New World with Arnold Schwarzenegger, caught me off guard with how comedic he was in that. It’s the concept of video games, just dying and coming back to life and learning. So what was the concept behind that?
Dave Wilson: If you’ve played New World: Aeternum, you probably wouldn’t go to comedy. We had been struggling to find the right episode for a long, long time, and I’m sitting in the studio with JT, and we can’t come up with anything. And then I get this video sent to me from Tim, and it’s Arnold. And Arnold’s like, “Dave, whatever you want me to do. I’m in, like the series.” I called him, and I’m like, “Is this for real?” He’s like, “Yeah.” He wants to do an episode. And I’m like, “Okay.” We were like, “Let’s just write it for him and the idea right there on the spot.” John Scalzi was there sitting with us. He’s one of the authors we worked with on Love Death + Robots. And the idea was, essentially, what if Conan was all talk, and then we were like, “Yes, let’s write that episode,” and that was it.
Tim Miller: It’s really funny. He likes comedy, and he’s really good at it, so he had a good time with it. I don’t know if you noticed, but Gabriel Luna, the king he fights, the Persian king, is Gabe Luna, who’s the other Terminator in the Terminator movie I made, the bad Terminator. So a little Terminator rematch in that episode.
We’re talking about nostalgia before, and for me, watching the Mega Man one, and then the music, it just hits me. So what was that like trying to make sure, “Alright, we were going to have a new take or twist on certain games, but then we still have to add this. The fans are going to love this.”
Dave Wilson: That music was stuck in my head for a long, long time. And I remember the director came on and I was like, “I don’t mind what you do, but you gotta use this piece of music at some point in the episode.” But that one we worked very closely with Capcom and went through multiple iterations on. Nostalgic things always make me a bit nervous. I love that episode so much, and I’m so pumped by the end of it. I remember when I saw the story reel and then we had that music in and everything like that. I was like I needed 20 more minutes. So I think with all of these, I think what we’re trying to do is just capture the tone of it like. I don’t think a lot of people know the whole story of where Mega Man comes from and his relationship with Dr Light, so I wanted to do that in as succinct a way as possible.
Tim Miller: But I do think that was interesting because if it was us trying to satisfy a client or something, we would go, “Okay, well, they have to fight that. People always want action, so we’re going to have to have a little bit of action here.” Capcom said, “No, we’re fine with just an emotional piece here. And kudos to them, because it gave us a lot more time to focus on that.”
About Secret Level
Secret Level premieres on Prime Video on December 10, 2024.
Synopsis: Secret Level is a new adult-animated anthology series featuring original stories set within the worlds of some of the world’s most beloved video games. From the creative minds behind LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS, each of the 15 episodes is a celebration of games and gamers.
Secret Level features the voice talent of Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator Franchise), Kevin Hart (Jumanji), Keanu Reeves (John Wick), Temuera Morrison (The Book of Boba Fett, Chief of War), Ariana Greenblatt (Barbie, Ahsoka), Heaven Hart, Emily Swallow (The Mandalorian), Gabriel Luna (The Last of Us, Terminator: Dark Fate), Ricky Whittle (American Gods, Land of Bad), Patrick Schwarzenegger (The White Lotus), Merle Dandridge (The Last of Us), Claudia Doumit (The Boys), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Lost, The Union), Clive Standen (Vikings, The Morning Show), Laura Bailey (The Legend of Vox Machina), and Michael Beach (The Perfect Couple, Tulsa King)
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
