The Electric State is set to be one of Netflix's biggest movies of 2025, bringing the Russo brothers and Millie Bobby Brown together for the first time.
However, shortly after the release of the first trailer, fans of Simon Stålenhag's graphic novel – which the movie is based on – weren't too taken with how the Netflix movie has adapted the graphic novel.
Co-director and producer Joe Russo is no stranger to fan expectations given his extensive work in the MCU. As a result, he's learnt to "tune it out" to focus on telling the story that they wanted to tell.
"Fan expectations are complicated. The fans don't want the same thing, they all want something different," he told Digital Spy in an exclusive interview following The Electric State's panel at MCM Comic Con on Saturday (October 26).
Related: First trailer for Netflix's The Electric State
"We just try to make stories that we want to watch over and over again, and we have to. We go in the edit room and watch this 100, 200 times, so I better enjoy it. And that's really how we approach the material."
What to Read Next
Russo continued: "There are characters that are directly out of the graphic novel and then there are characters that are completely invented and inspired by. We didn't try to replicate direct imagery from the book, but we did pull characters from it, and pulled tone from it."
Like the graphic novel, The Electric State is set in an alternate '90s following a war between humanity and robots. During a period of uneasy peace, an orphaned teenager (Millie Bobby Brown) sets out on a journey to find her younger brother.
When it came to adapting the graphic novel, the Russos worked with regular writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to expand on the themes in Stålenhag's work around technology.
Related: Chris Pratt was "moved to tears" by Electric State script
"There's some really great elements to technology and some really horrifying elements to it. There's some really great people working in tech right now and there's some really terrifying people working in tech at the moment," Russo explained.
"It's hard to assess because I don't know that we'll understand the impact that it's had on us for years to come.
"Sometimes I say to my kids, in the most positive yet conversation encouraging way, that we have to be careful that we survive technology because it alters our psychology in very subtle ways and the more you engage with it, the more it can alter you.
"When we're working on the script those ideas were at the centre of it. That's what we sparked to in Stålenhag's work. He had a very similar point of view about technology was clear in his drawings. They're dark, they're dystopian, but there's still certain elements of hope in it.
"We went swimming in those concepts and as we expanded the world, it was always around this idea of how technology both helps and hurts us."
The Electric State is released on Netflix on March 14, 2025.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
