The Russo Brothers are on their way back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to direct the next two Avengers movies. However, before they do that, they’re finishing up work on what might be an even wilder experience than the next big superhero event films. Their upcoming Netflix movie, The Electric State, features a battle between humans and robots, which bizarrely includes a robot Mr. Peanut voiced by Woody Harrelson. And the brothers explained how they convinced execs to let them use him.
The setup for The Electric State is weird enough on its own. It’s set in an alternate timeline, in which due to Walt Disney’s creation of audio-animatronics for Disneyland in the 1950s, robots take a different path and became sentient. This leads to a robot vs. human war, where the robots are led by Mr. Peanut. Joe and Anthony Russo were apparently quite committed to using the beloved snack mascot. They told Vanity Fair it took a lot of conversations with Planters’ parent company, Hormel, to make a deal. According to Anthony Russo…
We pursued it for a long time, and it was a process for the Hormel folks to come around to it, but eventually they did. It took a lot of middlemen and conversations through middlemen about what we were trying to do, and it eventually all worked out.
The Electric State cast includes Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown, who has called the film a "live-action Wall-E." The story sees the pair work together in the aftermath of a war between man and machine, as Brown searches for her brother, whom she previously believed was dead.
It's understandable why executives at Planters might be less than excited about Mr. Peanut being used this way in a movie. Anything that might paint Mr. Peanut in a negative light could potentially impact the brand. It’s a similar situation that the Barbie movie had when Mattel execs would occasionally worry about how the character was being presented.
In the end, however, the two sides agreed, and the Russos had a lot of freedom to use Mr. Peanut. While Mr. Peanut may be a big part of the film, many of the other robots are original creations for the story. The Russo Brothers do say they didn’t want to overdo the commercialism element in The Electric State, something that Hormal probably also appreciated. Joe Russo explained…
They gave us creative reign. It was a delicate balance because you don’t want to overwhelm the movie with commercialism or a level of reality that pulls you out of the fable, but we felt like Mr. Peanut fit the tone of the design of the other robots, and we thought it funny that he was essentially their Atticus Finch. The most well-spoken and thoughtful of the robots is a peanut with a cane and a top hat.
Mr. Peanut’s character was apparently inspired largely by former President Jimmy Carter, which is fitting since he grew up on a peanut farm and kept his family's peanut-growing business alive as an adult. Why their leader wasn’t Disneyland’s animatronic Abraham Lincoln is a question I certainly hope the movie answers. The Electric State doesn't have an official release date yet, but the movie is expected to drop later this year for everybody with a Netflix subscription.
