Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub moderates our Inside Hollywood panel at CCXP 2024 with special guests Robert Kirkman, Tim Miller, and Dave Wilson.

The trio discusses Hollywood’s tough reality: from project shifts to film cancelations, anything can happen.

Kirkman, Miller, and Wilson discuss Invincible Season 3, Secret Level Season 2, using AI as a tool, getting projects off the ground, and the ever-evolving landscape of the industry.

At one of the world’s largest cons, CCXP in São Paulo, Brazil, Collider was thrilled to invite The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and Secret Level creators Tim Miller and Dave Wilson to the Thunder Stage for our Inside Hollywood panel. Moderated by our own Steve Weintraub, the trio sat down to get candid about what goes on behind the scenes on the long journey to getting your vision to the screen, from working with studios to tricky on-set personalities.
For an in-depth conversation, who better than these three, who have forged forward in creative partnerships with vastly different paths? From seeing their work translated to new media, like Kirkman, to fighting for the on-screen debut of a beloved comic book character, only to see the IP explode in the last decade like Miller (Deadpool), they’ve experienced the ups and downs of the Hollywood machine over the years. Now, each of them is working with Prime Video on projects that are close to their hearts, with the animated adaptation of Kirkman’s Invincible comics and Miller and Wilson’s adult animated series Secret Level.
Check out the full conversation in the video above or read the transcript below for insight into working with Oscar-nominated directors like Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) and David Fincher (The Social Network), navigating tough pitch meetings for atypical antiheroes like Deadpool, and working with streaming giants like Netflix and Prime Video. Kirkman, Miller, and Wilson also discuss the use of AI in their fields, behind the scenes of past projects, and the future of Invincible, Secret Level, and much more.
Filmmaking Isn’t Easy – Even for Guillermo del Toro

“The only way to get there is to keep moving forward.”

COLLIDER: Everyone here who’s attending this panel is a fan of you guys and a fan of movies and a fan of TV shows. What do you think people here would be surprised to learn about being in Hollywood and trying to make movies and TV?
TIM MILLER: Take it away, Robert.
ROBERT KIRKMAN: Oh my gosh, I was going to say, “Tim, talk first.” Dang it. I mean, I don’t know. Everybody talks about how difficult it is. It’s crazy, you’ll see people in interviews say any movie that gets made is an absolute miracle, and speaking from experience, that’s 100% true. The hoops, the arbitrary things that happen that kill movies every single day is absolutely insane. I have, like, five, 10 different projects that people ask me about, and it’s like, “Hey, I can’t talk about that anymore. I don’t really have any update for that.” And half the time was because somebody sneezed, and then somebody was like, “Yeah, we don’t want to make that anymore, or, “Eh, let’s wait another two years. Let’s see what happens.” It’s a crazy process behind the scenes. I wish I could go into any specificity.
DAVE WILSON: It definitely does take a long, long time. You hear the stories from the outside, like seven years, 10 years, and you think that is the exception to the rule, but that is how long it takes. And as far as inside-inside, that is not Tim Miller’s real hair. If you want to know what he did with all the money he made from Deadpool, just look at the photos when he was making it — that wasn’t there.
KIRKMAN: I had a project very recently, and I got a call. It had been in development for a while — I won’t name what it was — and we had a script, we had directors, and they were like, “We’re gonna go out to these actors, and if these actors say yes, we get the green light. We’re going into production.” And so I got off the phone, and I was like, “Huh, I’m pretty close to making a movie. That’s pretty cool.” Then, a couple of weeks went by, and I was like, “I wonder what happened. I haven’t heard anything.” So I called, and I was like, “What’s going on with that project?” And they said, “They said no. It’s dead.”
MILLER: I would just add that if any of you are aspiring filmmakers, there’s a tendency to think that, “Well, that’s really hard to do, and it’ll never happen for me.” I can just say to you that probably every one of us and everybody else who’s done anything, we had that same thought. It’s going to be really hard, but you just have to keep moving forward and keep doing it because it never gets easier.
I’ve been in rooms with guys like David Fincher and Jim Cameron and Guillermo del Toro, and Guillermo said, “You’d think that any film I would take out, people would make it,” and he said, “I have made 12 films, but I’ve developed 36.” That was at Steve’s panel that I heard that. So, it’s this thing where you think it’s impossible, and often it is, but the only way to get there is to keep moving forward and to know that it’s really difficult for everybody. Even if you’re Jim Cameron, they don’t automatically do your film. So, don’t give up on your dream.
KIRKMAN: I want to add that I think anybody out there, anybody watching this, should be inspired by how obvious an idiot I am. Like, if I can do it, anybody can do it.
Will AI Bring on the Apocalypse or Great VFX?

There’s only one way to find out!

Image via Columbia Pictures

A lot of people are talking about AI in Hollywood. Do you view it as a threat? Do you view it as something that the industry is going to sort of learn to work with? What do you think it’s going to be in five or 10 years, not just today?
WILSON: Look, I’m excited by it. Tim and I both come from visual effects, so embracing technology is a big aspect of what we do. I think there are going to be great things. We don’t want to tell the same movies for cheaper; we want to use all that technology to tell bigger films and put more out on those TVs every year.
One of the things I’m not, in terms of the five to 10-year plan, is sort of personally curated television where you’re going to talk into your remote, and you’re going to say, “I want to watch a movie with this actor and that actor, and I want it to star me, too, and I want it to be science fiction.” I feel like it’s going to rob us of this social aspect, this community aspect to entertainment where we share social culture. There’s a saying I love, which is, “Seeing a person reading a book you love is like watching a book recommend a person,” and I think we’d do away with that with this idea of personally curated entertainment.
MILLER: Like everybody, I’m terrified of AI, but I’m also excited about it because anything that allows us to do new and innovative and different creative projects is something I’m interested in. I also feel a certain amount of, you can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. It’s here to stay, and then it’s up to us to make it relevant and to use the technology in ways that we’ve used every technology since the invention of the wheel or fire — to make our lives better and richer and fuller. So, it’s fucking scary, ladies and gentlemen, in a way that I haven’t been frightened by technology before, but it’s also something that’s going to lift us up in a very big way. And I say this as a man who’s made the Terminator [Dark Fate] movie, which means technology kills us all. I don’t think it’s going to do that… this time.
KIRKMAN: You’re just trying to get on the good side.
MILLER: No! Yes. If any AIs are listening, just remember that I’m your friend, and I will help you in any way I can. Even if it means putting Dave in a concentration camp.
WILSON: Thank you.
KIRKMAN: Look, I think it’s scary.
MILLER: This is a guy who does post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows, so why would it scare him? You want it to happen, don’t you?
KIRKMAN: No! I definitely don’t. No. I mean, I think that there is a path forward to optimism where I can see it making special effects, giving us more access to insane spectacle and cool things like that, but there is the darkest timeline where our personalized lives, where we’re seeing our own news, and we’re on our own social media, and we’re not interacting with people, and then suddenly we’re making our own entertainment. “I watched a version of Commando 2 starring a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and me.”
WILSON: Haven’t we all watched your personally curated content already?
MILLER: You know what? You can write your own books right now; everybody’s had that power for the last few hundred years, and we don’t do it. So, why are we going to make bad movies? It’s why people tell stories. It’s why some people are better authors, storytellers, or directors than others.
KIRKMAN: That’s the optimistic way of looking at it, but like you say, the toothpaste is out of the tube. We’re going to see what happens, but it is going to cost people jobs. It is already costing people jobs. I think we’re right to be a little apprehensive about it, but I’m trying to be positive.
MILLER: I actually think the future is going to be a better place. It’s the time between now and the future that is going to be tricky.
KIRKMAN: That is true. And is that time between 30 years, 10 years, or 100 years?
MILLER: I kind of think these people don’t give a fuck about this conversation. Let’s move on, Steve.
Robert Kirkman Discusses How Involved He Was on ‘The Walking Dead’

The major franchise could have been very different without HBO.

Custom Image by Jefferson Chacon 

I don’t think a lot of people realize what really goes on behind the scenes when you’re trying to get something made. Robert, I’ll start with you. Can you take us through what it was like when you were trying to get The Walking Dead on TV or Invincible? If you could pull back the curtain, like, how many meetings is it? What is it really like? What are the complex parts of the negotiation?
KIRKMAN: Look, the honest truth is that Frank Darabont got The Walking Dead made. If Frank Darabont doesn’t go into House of Secrets in Burbank and somebody recommends him a Walking Dead comic, I’m not sitting here right now. So, I wasn’t in a lot of those meetings. I made a lot of decisions, and there’s some behind-the-scenes stuff that I probably can’t get into, but a lot of those calls were me and my manager trying to navigate the waters of AMC and what they had promised Darabont and what was going on with that. So, I have a lot of visibility into the early days of production on that show, and I will only tell those stories in private.
MILLER: You’re probably going to say this is true, but what I’ve noticed is generally what Hollywood does when it finds a book or a comic book or a game, the first thing they do is say, “Hey, we really love what you’ve created. Now give it to us, and fuck off.” And you probably were in that scene where they’re like, “Oh, man, we love this comic. We’re in this world you’ve created. Now get the fuck out of here, and let us do what we do best,” which is to fuck up other people’s properties, often.
KIRKMAN: I was able to avoid that because Walking Dead was a very desired project, and there was kind of a bidding war between HBO and AMC that was happening. Because of that bidding war, AMC and HBO got into a competition of, “We’ll give Robert this. No, we’ll give Robert this. No, we’ll give Robert this. No, we’ll give Robert this.” And we just kept going, “Well, HBO gave us this,” and then AMC would go, “Pft, alright…” And then to HBO, we’d be like, “AMC gave us this,” and HBO would go, “Pft, alright…” Because I kept getting more access, more control, more involved in the project until I was in the writers’ room. I was a full EP. I was with everybody making casting decisions, but I was fortunate that those two places wanted it. If I hadn’t had that, one of those two places probably would have been like, “I don’t think we need this guy from Kentucky who’s never written television before, so maybe we’ll just go with the Oscar-winning director.”
KIRKMAN: “Guy from Kentucky, guy who directed Shawshank Redemption…”
KIRKMAN: No, I get it. But being in my own head and knowing what I know about Walking Dead, I was the guy who knew the most. I was pretty valuable in that room. So, I understand from their perspective how crazy the creators and the authors and people seem. I can see their perspective. But at the same time, if any executives are out there watching, The Walking Dead was a pretty popular show, and I cannot tell you how many times I was in a production meeting or casting meeting or sitting in the writers’ room, going, “I did this in the comic, this is how the audience reacted. If we do this in the show, this is how people will react.” That stuff was very valuable. So, I would say that there is tremendous value to keeping the original authors and creators involved every step of the way. Now, that said, I knew when to go. Costume’s not my expertise. I am not going to demand that they wear this hat. I knew when to kind of take a back seat and go, “Okay, you guys run with this.”
MILLER: So the takeaway is, Robert Kirkman saved The Walking Dead. Otherwise, it would be a terrible television show. You should all thank him. He deserves your love.
KIRKMAN: You’ve seen [The Walking Dead] World Beyond.

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The Surprising Reason HBO Turned Down ‘The Walking Dead’

HBO swung and missed with this odd explanation.

So, you have this great success with The Walking Dead and then with Invincible. How is it different when you’re making an animated series? Can you talk behind the scenes on that?
KIRKMAN: I guess that goes to “it’s who you know.” It’s the access you have. A lot of people talk about gatekeeping, and the only thing I would say is it’s 100% who you know, it’s 100% who you have access to, but there are ways to get that access. As bad as that system is, figure out those ladders, figure out ways to get your foot in the door. Getting Invincible made took a long time, but once certain things aligned, it was a pretty easy process. Sharon Tal Yguado was an executive at Fox International, and when AMC was making The Walking Dead, that was the first show that they were financing completely themselves. They, as a big company, got cold feet, and they sold the international rights to The Walking Dead to Fox International, so Fox International came in and paid a portion of that budget.
So, Sharon Tal was kind of all in on that show as a Fox International executive and was on set when we were producing the first season. Sharon Tal eventually found herself at Amazon and had green light power, and so she was a buddy. They were trying to expand their animation and do more animation, and it was just conversations with her. We did not put together an Invincible package; we did not pitch Invincible to a ton of outlets. It was conversations with Sharon, Sharon gave us the green light, and then we were good to go.
Thank you, Sharon.
KIRKMAN: And because of that relationship, Invincible is produced in-house at Skybound. We were able to do all kinds of things that we maybe wouldn’t have been able to do if we hadn’t had such a close relationship with the people there.
David Fincher Was Pivotal in Getting ‘Love, Death & Robots’ Made

“Hollywood is afraid of things that haven’t been done.”

Tim, I love Love, Death & Robots, and you also have Secret Level at Prime Video. So, to go back behind the scenes, what was it like getting Love, Death & Robots off the ground, and the same thing with Secret Level? Was it easier based on the success of Love, Death & Robots?
WILSON: Tim’s going to tell this story, but I’ve Tim brought me out from South Africa many, many years ago. I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside him and being his friend for over two decades. I remember there was a moment when it was originally Heavy Metal, and Tim came to me and he was like, “We’ve got Jim Cameron and all these amazing [directors]. Zack Snyder.” Tim was going to direct one, Fincher was going to direct one — five of the the great directors out there. Then, we were going to go and turn it into a feature of anthologies. I was like, “Oh my god, if anything gets made in this town, it has to be this thing.” Nothing. And that was where I was like, “I don’t get it.” Because I would watch that in the theater in a heartbeat.
MILLER: We had 100 meetings, and it’s not just me because this was before Deadpool. It was really hard to get in the room to pitch these things, but David Fincher wanted to do it, and everybody loved David. We had meetings with Tom Cruise, we had meetings with all the big studios, and nobody would agree to do it because Hollywood is afraid of things that haven’t been done. “R-rated animated anthology” were three words that didn’t go together in the world of Hollywood. So, we took a lot of meetings, and even with that group of directors who are undeniably great, they wouldn’t let us do it. Then I made Deadpool, and then David said, “Fuck the movies. Let’s just go to Netflix because they’ll take a chance on this.” And that’s what we did. Then that show became Love, Death & Robots. But it really was meeting after meeting after meeting. Then it became much easier when for this show, which started three years ago, Secret Level, when we said, “We want to make Love, Death & Video Games.” It was a much easier lift because they could see exactly what we were going to do.
Tim, I’m sure you guys have all battled people behind the scenes. Do you want to share any stories of something you fought for and why you fought so hard for it? There’s always something you have to overcome.
WILSON: I’ve been battling Tim Miller for 20 years about everything from what movies we should make to can we please have a better fucking coffee machine in our studio?
MILLER: I thought you were going to tell us about Vin Diesel, Dave, and Bloodshot.
WILSON: Your panel is not long enough.
KIRKMAN: But maybe just a little. [Laughs]
WILSON: No.

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Listen, I like Vin, but the only issue with Vin, and maybe I’m wrong about this, is sometimes he’s a little late to set.
KIRKMAN: People talk about pampered movie stars and people being late to set and stuff — these guys got a lot going on.
MILLER: What the fuck is that?
KIRKMAN: I’m just saying. I’m just saying. These tequila companies don’t start themselves.
MILLER: If there are 200 people waiting for you to arrive, then the least you could do is be on time. That’s all I have to say.
KIRKMAN: Who’s gonna make the tequila?!
MILLER: But I will say this, it’s not just like there’s one battle or one person. It is a constant fight to do what you think is best, and you have to be willing to say uncomfortable things. You have to be willing to lose sometimes. But what I don’t think you can ever do is give up on what you think it should be. That doesn’t mean that if you lose you take your toys and walk away. Although, on one movie, and I won’t tell you which one…
WILSON: It’s going to be a coin toss.
MILLER: There are only two movies I’ve directed, so you have a 50% chance of getting it. I said, “I don’t understand the way you want me to shoot this scene, and I don’t think I can do it.” And they said, “Well, you have to do it. You don’t have a choice. That’s the way it was written. You can’t change it.” And I said, “But I don’t understand it. I don’t understand what the characters are doing,” And they said, “But you have to do it. There’s no choice. This is what you have to do.” I said, “Well, then I quit,” and they said, “Well, then we’re going to sue you and take everything you have.” And then I said, “Well, then I unquit.” Because it was true, at that stage in the movie, they could have sued me and taken my house and everything. You think this shit’s not real until somebody goes, “Your family? They’re going to be on the street.”
WILSON: “Now, shoot the scene.”
MILLER: “Shoot the scene, director boy.” It does happen like that. But I can tell you, on Deadpool, it’s a non-linear narrative, right? It takes place in flashbacks and what have you. There was a genuine push, at one point, to cut a linear version of the movie, and of course, I go, “Well, that’s a fucking waste of time. It’ll never work, and it won’t be good.” But I still had to do it.
But I will say this, as much as all that bullshit happens — and this is true about any job, anywhere — anything, even a bad note, even a bad suggestion that forces you to look at what you’re doing again, you’ll invariably find a way to make it better. It may not be the note that they gave you or the bad suggestion that they made, but it’ll make you make it better because nobody does their best work with too much time, too much money, and the ability to do whatever the fuck they want. Everybody sees it now. We see these movies that are fucking three hours long, and they meander all over the place, and they’re from directors that we love and that have made fantastic work.
KIRKMAN: Name names!
MILLER: Come on, man.
KIRKMAN: Did you see Megalopolis?
MILLER: At least he paid for it.
KIRKMAN: I liked it.
MILLER: I didn’t see it.

7:01

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I’m going to demonstrate something about Tim, though. He doesn’t like anything. Name the last three movies you really loved.
MILLER: Dune. The first one. I liked that one best. I thought Rebecca Ferguson’s portrayal of Paul’s mother made the whole movie for me. Then we’re going to go back to Gladiator. [Laughs]
This is what I mean. I’m telling you. He’s very tough to please.
MILLER: And then I’m going to go back to Aliens.
We’re talking 20-year jumps. Robert, do you want to share any battles behind the scenes?
KIRKMAN: No, I don’t really, I don’t really have any.
MILLER: This is such bullshit because when we’re in the room back there, he’s talking shit about everybody. There’s so much dirt coming out of this guy’s mouth, it’s like I needed a shovel to get out of the door to get up on the stage. Now, he’s like, “Everybody was, uh…”
KIRKMAN: No, I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say there’s not much I can talk about. Listen, I’m trying to be a good boy, but I will say Tim is not wrong. If any of you ever get me in private, I’ll tell you some stories.
This Violent Scene was Cut from ‘Deadpool’

“The sound of it is like celery crunching.”

Image via 20th Century Studios

So you guys are all making stuff at Prime Video and all your stuff has blood and guts. Is there any pushback from them on anything? Or after the success of The Boys and what The Boys has done, are they sort of like, “Just go for it?”
KIRKMAN: I watch The Boys. I love The Boys. Great show. Every time I watch an episode, I go, “Okay, give me one fucking note. I dare you to give me one content note.” The shit that they show on The Boys is far beyond anything I would ever try to put in Invincible. [Laughs] So, now, we have never gotten the content note, to Prime’s credit. If we did, it would be war, and I would be taking about that. I’d be like, “I can’t show exposed collarbone or brains coming out of an eye socket, and you’re over there on The Boys, got people crawling up people’s urethras? Are you crazy?”
MILLER: Prime has never given us a note on that. They’ve given us some story suggestions, but there’s never been a note on that. I will say, I like The Boys and I love the comic book, and I like that edgy stuff. I didn’t get any notes on Deadpool either, believe it or not, on that topic. Except, there was one very important moment in the fight, and the bad guy, Ajax, face-stomps Deadpool and breaks his neck. It’s a really ugly fight movement, and the sound of it is like celery crunching. It’s disgusting. When you test the movie, you get to see what the audience thinks, and on that shot, I lost every woman in the audience. I mean, it’s just like the scores dropped because it was such an unpleasant thing to watch. Fox said, “You don’t have to cut the shot, but we think the movie might benefit from it if you did.” I cut the shot because I could see that I was losing the audience, and they didn’t enjoy it as much.
WILSON: I remember when we were doing Love, Death & Robots, I directed one of the episodes in there, “Sonnie’s Edge,” and the level of freedom we had to be naked and violent in those episodes was amazing. There were no notes there, and I was like, “This will never happen again.”
MILLER: But nothing like the freedom we get on Prime.
WILSON: That’s what I was going to say. I thought, “This will never happen again,” and we came over here, and it’s even more so. I think some of our developers, if we wanted to rip heads off Mega Man, I think we may have got some pushback there.
How Many Seasons of ‘Invincible’ Will There Be?

“I’m greedy.”

One of the things that I think frustrates a lot of fans, myself included, is the long breaks between seasons. I’m curious for the three of you guys who are making shows that are streaming, what can we do to shorten that window? And how come more shows don’t have writers’ rooms that keep going after a season wraps in case the greenlight happens?
WILSON: You lose a lot of that. Your team all scatter between the waiting, so there’s no continuity between the thing, which is always terrible.
MILLER: Money, Steve. Just money. That’s all there is to. It’s money. Writers’ rooms cost money.
WILSON: One of our episodes, the “Unreal Tournament [Xan]” episode in Secret Level, we worked with Epic Games on and it’s created entirely in Engine, so we did it in Unreal Engine. Tim and I have wanted to do that for years because we do feel like there’s an untapped animated process there that can be used to not just generate content more quickly but tell bigger stories because it took us three years to make Secret Level’s first season at least. So, I think if we can find quicker… And that’s where the AI stuff comes in, too. Hopefully, we can tell bigger stories on an annual basis.
MILLER: But Prime is very good about that, about looking forward and seeing the future, which is why I’d like to be the first to announce that they have greenlit 87 seasons of Invincible.
KIRKMAN: What?!
MILLER: Yeah, they did. They told me backstage. They told me to keep it as a surprise.
KIRKMAN: I’m quitting after Season 12.
MILLER: The Walking Dead is also going to get 92 seasons.
KIRKMAN: That might be true. Speaking specifically of Invincible, I have no experience with long gaps between seasons or long gaps in the middle of seasons. So, I really have nothing to say about this topic.
MILLER: He’s had such an easy time, ladies and gentlemen.

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Here Are All the Explosive Details We Have on ‘Invincible’ Season 3

With two more confirmed seasons, Mark Grayson must really be… [TITLE CARD]

He is lying.
KIRKMAN: I am completely lying. Like Dave was saying, the animation takes, like, three years all in to produce a season. So, in order to have a show come out with any kind of regularity, you have to stagger seasons, which means that our supervising directors, Dan Duncan and Shaun O’Neil are working on multiple seasons constantly, which is a lot of pressure for them, and it’s a tough job. Myself and Simon Racioppa are writing multiple… I mean, I’m sitting here promoting Season 3. We’ve already written a bunch of Season 4. It’s so tangled in my head that it’s very hard to talk about. But what I’m getting at, Tim talking about money, Amazon basically had to commit to four seasons pretty much before they knew that Season 2 was going to hit.
I feel like now we’ve kind of got a cadence where, when Season 3 lands, hopefully, we’ll get another season approved if it does well. We’re in to where we can keep them staggered. But when you’re doing the first season of a show, if you want that animated show to come out every year, your streamer or network or studio has to basically be all in on three seasons to ensure that there’s no gap, and realistically, that’s kind of impossible to do.
In an ideal world, how many seasons would Invincible go for?
KIRKMAN: The way Simon and I have mapped out where we would follow the comic and where the breaks would be, roughly eight seasons. It could be seven, could be 10. Would you say 87? We might be able to stretch it to 66.
MILLER: And then I’ll direct the Invincible movie when you’re done with the series.
KIRKMAN: I’ll hold you to that. You’re gonna be real upset. I’m gonna be like, “I’m gonna take your fucking house, Tim. I got a verbal agreement from you, Tim. I’ll put your family on the fucking street.”
KIRKMAN: I’ll direct it.
So, with Invincible, seven or eight seasons is the ideal goal.
KIRKMAN: Or nine. I can be greedy. We’ll see.
Tim Miller Reflects on the Trajectory of ‘Deadpool’

Custom Image by Jefferson Chacon

Tim, a lot of people know or remember that Fox did not want to make Deadpool. It was a real battle to get this thing made. What is it like for you going from that battle to Disney now talking about it in stockholder meetings, like Deadpool & Wolverine? It’s gone so far from you and Ryan [Reynolds] just begging for any money to get this thing made to what it’s now become.
MILLER: You know what? I feel nothing but pride. Every time I walk down the aisles out there on the floor of CCXP and I see all these Deadpool figurines, I think, “Man, they might not be here if we hadn’t made that film,” and I feel uniquely fortunate that I can be a part of it. Then, my second thought is, “I wish director deals had a piece of the merchandising so that I could get some money from all of that.” [Laughs] Here’s another thing you guys might not know: first-time directors in Hollywood, it’s not a really profitable thing. I’ll tell you exactly: I got $225,000 to direct Deadpool, which sounds like a lot of money, but for two years of work, that’s not a ton of money. Not that I’m not grateful. I’m fucking grateful. But that’s the way it is because you’re a first- time director.
KIRKMAN: I make more than that on an episode of The Walking Dead. What the hell?
MILLER: I know you do, motherfucker. And Dave had the same deal.
KIRKMAN: Dave, how much did you get for Bloodshot? Come on, man, throw them digits out, baby!
WILSON: No, it’s that. That’s what everybody gets.
MILLER: It’s not a lot when you think about directing a major Hollywood movie.
WILSON: I mean, from start to end, it’s two or three years.
Pete Davidson just came out and said he was making three grand a week on SNL when he first joined. I think a lot of people think that everyone’s getting paid millions and millions in Hollywood and that’s just not the case.
MILLER: Not always. But again, I don’t want to sound like I wasn’t grateful. I was 50 when I got the chance to direct Deadpool, and I really thought I wasn’t going to get a chance to direct a movie, even though I’d wanted to my whole life.
WILSON: I will say, the money, everything, whatever problems you may have, whether it’s on set and you’re running behind, it doesn’t matter what it is, you always have to think it is a privilege to do what we do. There are 1,000 people standing behind you, waiting to have all the problems you have.
Tim Miller Shares Updates on ‘The Goon’ and ‘Best Served Cold’

“I will make that fucking movie.”

Tim, what is the status of The Goon movie and Best Served Cold?
MILLER: I will never give up on The Goon movie. It is difficult to make. We thought we were moving forward. I think it was at your panel that we announced it was going to be a movie on Netflix. It took a year for that deal to happen, and as soon as we signed to make the movie with Netflix, they came back and said, “We’ve made a corporate decision not to do R-rated adult movies, so you can have it back,” to which I said, “Fuck you.” But what can you do about it except for keep trying? I will make it. Look, Deadpool took six years. I was on it before I made it. Heavy Metal, which became Love, Death & Robots, took at least that many.
And First Law, which is my passion project — I love the books of Joe Abercrombie. If you haven’t read them, they’re amazing dark fantasy. We were going to make it at Skydance, and the strike and a series of high profile movies not working and our movie being a little expensive, it’s not happening there. But, like The Goon, I will make that fucking movie if I have to sell my house, which would pay for, like, 30 seconds of it. Best Served Cold is the movie, and I think you should write your congresspeople if you have them, and tell them it must be. Or Prime. Write Prime Video because they could make this movie.
KIRKMAN: I think Prime should make this movie. We’re making The Goon movie!
MILLER: We’re making The Goon movie and Best Served Cold. I mean, look how successful they’ve been with Wheel of Time. That’s fantasy.

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Rebecca Ferguson Gives a Promising Update on Tim Miller’s ‘Best Served Cold’ Adaptation

‘Best Served Cold’ is based on Joe Abercrombie’s novel by the same name.

KIRKMAN: They make so many movies.
MILLER: Jeff Bezos has got a lot of money. Then we saw The Lord of the Rings [The Rings of Power] did very well for them. Can you have too much fantasy? I don’t think so.
KIRKMAN: Shave 10% off the budget of Lord of the Rings and make a Goon movie, Prime.
I was actually going to say, I think, God willing, the success of Secret Level will then lead to some executive over there being like, “What else would you like to do?”
MILLER: That’s the fantasy world of how this works, Steve.
Will There Be More ‘Secret Level’?

Hint: Yes, Prime Video has since renewed for Season 2.

I’m living in a fantasy world. Speaking of Secret Level, I’m sure that when you went out to the video game companies and the different people about IP to try to get something on Secret Level, you guys were told no, and now that people have seen the trailer and see how cool it is, have any of the people who said no to you now called you and said, “If you’re making more, can we be a part of it?”
WILSON: I’m not sure who’s called and said, “We made a huge mistake,” yet, but I know what I would love to do, which is something Tim and I wanted to see, and it stems from comics, to begin with. It’s crossovers, like something to give fans, something that they can’t get in the games. We went to Microsoft, and we passionately pitched a Master Chief versus Doom Slayer episode because everybody wants to see that.
MILLER: My favorite comics when I was young, I’m mostly a Marvel guy, except for The Authority. The Authority is my favorite comic. If you haven’t read it, it’s Justice League if they killed people. So, what you want to see is the crossovers. I want to see the Justice League fucking fight the Avengers. That was the best thing for me, and we want to do that in games as soon as somebody lets us.
What is the status of more Secret Level, or is Prime Video waiting for the show to come out? Have you guys been working behind the scenes in case you get to make more?
MILLER: Steve, you know I can’t answer that question.
KIRKMAN: Who’s the wimp now, Tim?
MILLER: I can’t.
KIRKMAN: Who’s the wimp now?
MILLER: Who’s the smart businessman now?
KIRKMAN: Both of us. Tim.
MILLER: We hope that the show does well and we’ll do more. But you don’t know. On Love, Death & Robots, they make us wait three months after the show comes out before we get another series. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. I mean, it’s kind of exciting.
Doing animation, there are always things that are more expensive to do in shots. Can you take people behind the scenes in terms of what ends up being the costly shot in Invincible or what ends up being the thing in Secret Level where everyone is questioning, “Can we really do this? Because if we do it this way, it’ll be way cheaper?”
KIRKMAN: The boring, quick answer is walking is very time-consuming to make, and I think is somewhat expensive. So, we write scenes constantly of a person walking in the room, a person walking in the hall, and when we sit down to do our production meetings, those are the first things that get pulled out of the script. They are already standing in the room. They’re having a conversation, standing against a wall. So, it’s little things like that that you don’t really think about.
WILSON: It’s funny; you’d think for us, it would be a very, very high-end, big explosion and things like that that are obviously the expensive ones, but it’s actually dialogue scenes. It’s the opposite, Robert. For us, it’s very high-fidelity facial animation and dialogue because we’re so used to looking at each other and judging. So, dialogue scenes are the ones that cost us a lot.
MILLER: This has nothing to do with Steve’s question because I don’t care about it, but as I sit up here, I feel like a really old guy. When I went to Comic-Cons when I was young, it would be in a motel conference room. There’d be, like, 200 people there or something, and this — I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to come to these events and see all these people that love this stuff that I love growing up. It really means a lot. There were so few people that you could feel this community, but now I feel like the whole world loves the kind of stuff that I love and that I grew up loving, and it just makes me so happy because that means there’s more of it around. I know you guys probably don’t feel lucky because it’s very crowded and everything, but this is fucking awesome because it didn’t used to exist.
By the way, this is the first panel I’ve done with Tim where he has not cried, but he’s close.
WILSON: No, no, he’s crying. I was close enough to see.
MILLER: Usually, we do Comic-Con in San Diego, and it’s not nearly as fucking cool as this setup.
You can watch both Invincible Seasons 1 and 2 and Secret Level Season 1 on Prime Video.

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Invincible is an adult animated superhero series that revolves around 17-year-old Mark Grayson, who’s just like every other guy his age — except his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet, Omni-Man. But as Mark develops powers of his own, he discovers his father’s legacy may not be as heroic as it seems.

Seasons

2

Network

Amazon Prime Video

Showrunner

Simon Racioppa

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Original stories set within the worlds of iconic video games are featured in this animated anthology series.

Seasons

1

Creator(s)

Tim Miller

Network

Amazon Prime Video

Watch on Prime