Inside the Making of Secret Level: Exclusive Details From Tim Miller and Dave Wilson

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Following the success of the acclaimed Netflix anthology series Love, Death & Robots, Tim Miller and Blur Studio, the animation company that he co-founded, are next tackling a very different kind of animated anthology series on Prime Video: the video game show Secret Level. Each episode of the show, which Miller created and produced with longtime collaborator Dave Wilson, adapts a different video game property, from recent hits such as The Outer Worlds and Sifu to established classics like Mega Man and Dungeons & Dragons. Given Blur’s extensive history creating trailers and cutscenes for some of the biggest video games ever, opening the door for the studio to work on more video game worlds than ever before was a no-brainer for all involved.

“Our bread and butter has always been these three-to-five minute trailers. The anthology format really started there,” Wilson tells Den of Geek magazine. “It’s very much a part of Blur’s DNA, the short-form storytelling of it. It’s a little trickier on Secret Level. There is so much lore to pull from, whether it’s D&D or Warhammer; there are 40 or 50 years of that. The trick is figuring out what’s important, what fans want to see, and we try to fit that into what we have to work with.”

But if you know anything about how territorial the games industry can be, you might be wondering how the heck Amazon got publishers as big as Capcom, PlayStation, Epic Games, and Bandai Namco to all lend properties to the same show. Working with all the different studios was no easy task, but Wilson credits the reputation that he, Miller, and Blur Studio have earned over the years in helping them win the trust of the publishers to license their properties for Secret Level. Miller notes it also helped that Amazon was not only very open to collaborating with the publishers on the project, but also didn’t seek to acquire any of the franchises it adapted for the series. This turned what could’ve been an absolute licensing nightmare into something much more manageable.

“It took Amazon having the vision to say, ‘We don’t need to do a land grab to make a show like this,’” Miller says. “Everybody knows Hollywood is a very acquisitive place; they want to own and control everything if they’re going to invest money in it. Amazon said, ‘We understand these are huge games that exist in their own right. We’re just borrowing them for a while.’ They made the deal-making easy.”

The first season of Secret Level is slated to run for 15 episodes, which will be released two per week, with stories ranging from five to 10 minutes each. Secret Level also boasts an all-star cast, including Keanu Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Claudia Doumit, Kevin Hart, and many more. Tonally, the episodes run the gamut of styles and genres, ranging from an epic sci-fi saga based on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 to a screwball action adventure based on Sony’s short-lived online game Concord. The episode based on the former actually serves as a sequel to the critically acclaimed game, and this isn’t the only game story getting an expansion from Secret Level. For the episode based on Unreal Tournament, Blur worked closely with Epic Games to bring the expansive sci-fi world to life and weave a previously untold story into the franchise’s lore.

“We got into a room with Epic to figure it out,” Wilson recalls, with the Unreal Tournament episode telling the rise of its gladiatorial antagonist, Xan. “One of the things we wanted to do in Secret Level is to tell the story that you’re not familiar with in the game. We don’t want to just retread the same ground.”

These close collaborations make each and every episode of Secret Level not only rewarding for longtime fans of a given video game property but also welcoming and accessible to newcomers. Each story is meant to be representative of the larger property but not necessarily beholden to it. 

“For the uninitiated, they can sit back and let it wash over them,” Miller says. “It’s not exposition-heavy, but you don’t feel lost if you haven’t invested years of your life in the franchise.”

And while there are plenty of video games that potential future seasons of Secret Level could adapt, Miller hopes to expand the scope of the show to cover other forms of gaming.

“If I had my way, we’d do board games in the show,” Miller says. “It’s really about what the community enjoys. Video games are great, but all of gaming is valuable. The community that plays video games also does all these other things.” 

Secret Level premieres Dec. 10 on Prime Video.

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