Tim Miller, co-founder of Blur Studio and director of Deadpool (2016), took the stage at Gamescom Opening Night Live to show off the first trailer for Secret Level, a 15-episode anthology of video game adaptations coming to Prime Video on Dec. 10.
Miller also managed to bring quite a bit of personality and emotion to the otherwise cut-and-dry event — as he geared up to announce Secret Level, which he’ll executive produce, Miller’s eyes brimmed with tears and his voice cracked. “We fucking love video games,“ he said before diving into details on the show, which will include narratives inspired by games like Concord, Dungeons & Dragons, Pac-man, Sifu, and The Outer Worlds, among others. Like Blur Studio’s popular Netflix anthology, Love, Death, + Robots, each episode will stand on its own.
The announcement was refreshing in several ways, and not just because the show looks more promising than the Borderlands movie that came out earlier this month. The animation looks like classic game cinematics, the trailer was well cut, and it gives fans who really don’t want to see their favorite thing go the Borderlands route.
It also included a man not so different from all of the other men we see on stage at events like Gamescom, but this time, he was crying. He stopped his speech multiple times to collect himself, and honestly, who wouldn’t? Miller said his team’s been working on Secret Level for three years, so the emotion is understandable if not commendable — but we rarely see figures like him getting emotional on stages like Geoff Keighley’s. His reverence for his team’s work is appropriate and welcome, and it makes me all the more excited to watch Secret Level when it premieres.
Maybe Miller will chock the emotions up to the high pressure of speaking to a crowd of thousands of people when he has a chance to reflect — Polygon couldn’t reach him for comment after his speech — but as someone who watches every minute of events like this, I found Miller’s emotion was profound and, hopefully, speaks to the care with which Secret Level was made.
The Blur Studio and Amazon MGM Studios-created series will premiere on Prime Video on Dec. 10.
