The Electric State: Release Date, Cast, Story, Trailer & Everything We Know

Chris Pratt is set to star in a new Netflix movie, The Electric State, and information regarding the cast, story, and more has been trickling out. The Electric State is directed by MCU veterans the Russo Brothers, marking their tenth feature film together and second original movie for Netflix. The film is based on the 2018 science fiction dystopian graphic novel of the same name by Simon Stålenhag, and is set in an alternate version of the 1990s where a robot joins forces with a young woman to find her missing brother.

Rights for the film were acquired back in 2017, and there was a long pre-production phase, with the Russos releasing Citadel, The Gray Man, and Cherry in the intervening years. News about The Electric State has been slow to arrive, probably a symptom of how long it’s been gestating, but now that filming has wrapped, more and more news has been released regarding the release date, the cast, the story, along with some interesting conversations between the stars of the film. ​​​​​​

The Electric State Latest News

Netflix Reveals A Trailer For The Upcoming Movie

Netflix’s next multi-million dollar potential hit is now on the release schedule, and the latest news comes in the form of a trailer for The Electric State. The trailer opens with narration from Millie Bobbie Brown’s Michelle, who describes the world following a quelled robot uprising, and she laments the disconnection between people caused by the rise of technology. After her brother goes missing, Michelle teams up with robots and Chris Pratt’s Keats, to go on a cross-country adventure to find him. Things aren’t smooth, however, and they meet resistance from humans and robots alike.

The Electric State Release Date

The Millie Bobbie Brown Movie Arrives In March 2025

Though the movie has been a long time coming, Netflix has finally penciled The Electric State into the schedule for 2025. The Millie Bobbie Brown blockbuster will drop on the platform on March 14, 2025, more than two years after filming wrapped in February 2023. The Russo Brothers film has a reported budget of over $300 million and needs to be a hit for Netflix. Though hits are a bit trickier to define without box office numbers, there’s a lot riding on The Electric State to succeed.

The Electric State Cast Details

Millie Bobbie Brown was the first cast member announced for The Electric State. She is set to star as the protagonist of the film, Michelle, an orphaned teenager, alongside Chris Pratt as a mysterious smuggler, Keats. Michelle Yeoh, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander, Brian Cox, and Jenny Slate were announced as cast members in August 2022. Cox and Slate will be voicing robot characters. Woody Norman from C’mon C’mon was added to the cast in October 2022, and he’ll be playing Michelle’s lost brother, Christopher.

This is Chris Pratt’s third film with the Russo Brothers after playing Starlord in
Avengers: Infinity War
and
Avengers: Endgame
.

Yeoh was supposed to play a doctor character in the film but had to depart the movie due to scheduling conflicts (via Variety). Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once) was selected to replace her. Anthony Mackie (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and Billy Bob Thornton (The Gray Man, Fargo) are set to voice Pratt’s robotic sidekick and a key figure from the Civil War, respectively, in The Electric State. Giancarlo Esposito rounds out the cast as the antagonist, Marshall, a robotic drone that hunts Michelle.

The confirmed cast of The Electric State includes:

The Electric State Story Details

The story, based on the Simon Stålenhag novel, follows Michelle (Brown), a teenage girl who has been left all alone after her parents die and her younger brother disappears. Set in an alternate United States in the mid-1990s, The Electric State depicts the world after a civil war was fought between humans and robots. In this post-apocalyptic American West, robots still traverse, some friendly and others dangerous. Michelle sets off through the dangerous land to find her brother at the behest of a robot she meets.

On her journey, Michelle meets a mysterious smuggler (Pratt) and his sidekick robot (Mackie), as well as another strange robot whom she invites on her journey when she learns her brother is the one who sent it. Michelle and the smuggler meet many more robots on their quest and one in particular, Marshall (Esposito), seems to be personally driven to stop Michelle and kill her robot companion. Michelle is sure to meet many more characters along the way, including a doctor played by Quan.

Being the youngest actor announced, it’s likely that Woody Norman will play Michelle’s younger brother in The Electric State. Images from the comics can also help to paint a picture of what the movie will entail and, from the wide open vistas, decaying robots, and few characters, The Electric State looks to be more of a quiet character study than an action-packed thriller in the vein of the Russo Brothers’s previous projects. No doubt there will be some thrills with Pratt signed on, but this could prove to be a more internal performance than he usually gives.

The Electric State Trailer

Watch The Trailer Below

Not long after the movie’s release date was announced, Netflix dropped an exciting trailer for The Electric State. The sneak-peek opens with Brown’s Michelle lamenting the world following a failed robot uprising and man’s increasing attachment to technology. Her brother goes missing, and she decides to set out on an epic quest to find him with the help of a smuggler named Keats (Pratt), and a few friendly bots. Along the way, Michelle and her team meet all kinds of resistance as both humans and robots seem determined to stop her.