After a massive marketing campaign and boasting the biggest budget for a Netflix movie ever, “The Gray Man” hit the streamer last month to …a pretty tepid critical response. Joe and Anthony Russo‘s latest received next to no positive tallies from critics. No surprise there: few recent blockbusters are as wooden or narratively inert. But viewership numbers for the actioner are ever-climbing, so the Russos’ next project for them continues full steam ahead.
Deadline reports the Russos have their ensemble cast for “The Electric State” lined up. Millie Bobbie Brown and Chris Pratt have been attached to the project for a while, but now some big names join them on the cast. Michelle Yeoh, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander, Brian Cox, and Jenny Slate join Brown and Pratt for the sci-fi story. Who each new actor plays is a mystery right now, but production on begins on the film this Fall, so answers may reveal themselves then.
Based on Simon Stålenhag‘s 2018 illustrated novel of the same name, “The Electric State” is a coming-of-age tale that mixes sci-fi and western genres in a retro-futuristic past. Brown plays an orphaned teenager who traverses the American West with her robot friend and an eccentric drifter in search of her younger brother. The Russos direct Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely‘s adaptation of Stålenhag’s novel.
Yeoh is amid a late-career resurgence thanks to her starring role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Tucci is in the upcoming Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” out this December. “Seinfeld” alum Alexander has been doing a lot of voiceover work recently. Cox currently stars in the HBO smash-hit “Succession,” but he’s also a workhorse: he’s in several upcoming films, including “The Independent” and “Skelly.” As for Slate, she’s fresh off the success of her feature-length take on “Marcel The Shell With Shoes On.”
Netflix outbid its opponents to snag “The Electric State” when it went on the market earlier this year. So, will their investment pay off? Whatever one thinks of the overall quality of “The Gray Man,” the Russo Brothers remain a hot Hollywood commodity, so this project will be a big one for the streamer. And with an ensemble cast like this, it’s hard not to be excited.
