Development In 2015, after completing his tenure on the
Disney Channel/
Disney XD animated series
Gravity Falls, writer and director
Mike Rianda was approached by
Sony Pictures Animation, which asked him if he was willing to pitch any feature film ideas to them, to which he agreed. When brainstorming, Rianda drove down to his hometown of Salinas, California and recorded a list of potential ideas for a feature. He then settled on developing a story that combined his own personal experiences with his family, as well as his childhood fascination with robots. He made his own manifesto of the film titled "
Control, Alt, ESCAPE!", which was the original title of the film before the reveal; inspired by
Dogme 95 films,
Studio Ghibli's designs, 1960s-esque photography, and teenagers' drawings. Sony co-produced the film in collaboration with Hong Kong's
One Cool Films, with its founder
Louis Koo financially backing the film and serving as an executive producer. On May 22, 2018, Sony announced that
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller joined the project as producers. The film is the duo's fourth collaboration with SPA following the two
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs films and
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, as well as the studio's first original feature film since
The Star.
Jeff Rowe, who worked on
Gravity Falls alongside Rianda, joined in as co-director and writer. Further details were revealed a year later at the 2019
Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June, when Sony Animation president
Kristine Belson revealed that the film would be using an animation style similar to
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and that the worlds the Mitchell family and the robots live in are initially separate universes before colliding, a concept that was not included in the completed film. On February 20, 2020, first images were revealed through
Entertainment Weekly, and it was announced the title was changed to
Connected. The film was renamed back to
The Mitchells vs. the Machines after Sony sold the distribution rights to
Netflix on January 21, 2021.
Casting made his film debut in
The Mitchells vs. the Machines as the voice of Monchi. On February 19, 2020,
Abbi Jacobson was cast as Katie Mitchell. This was followed by casting announcements for
Danny McBride,
Maya Rudolph, Rianda,
Eric André, and
Olivia Colman the next day. In what is believed to be a first for an animated film,
Doug the Pug, a real-life dog that was popular on social media, provided the "voice" for Monchi, who is based on Rianda's own childhood dog Monchichi. While they had originally considered using human voice actors for Monchi as typically done, they wanted to make the movie as authentic as possible and sought out Doug's owners to use his barks and other sounds for the film.
Music Following the release of the first trailer, Lord confirmed on Twitter that his and Miller's frequent collaborator,
Mark Mothersbaugh, composed the score for the film, which also makes it his sixth collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation, following his previous work in the
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and
Hotel Transylvania film series. In January 2021, director Rianda revealed on Twitter that the movie's soundtrack will incorporate songs from various artists, including
Los Campesinos!,
Sigur Rós,
Talking Heads,
Grimes,
Le Tigre, PRTY H3RO,
The Mae Shi and
Madeon, as well as a brand new original song by
Alex Lahey. A soundtrack album containing Mothersbaugh's score and Lahey's song "On My Way" (which was played during the end credits) was released by
Sony Classical Records on April 30, 2021, the same day as its Netflix release.
Animation and design The film's animation was handled by
Sony Pictures Imageworks, who had animated the majority of Sony Pictures Animation's films beforehand. According to Christopher Miller, Rianda wanted “hand-painted watercolor style” look for the film, and much of the technology used for
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was reused for
The Mitchells vs. the Machines to achieve this while new tools were created. Unlike
Into the Spider-Verse's comic-book style visuals and techniques,
Mitchells predominately used 2D-style effects to mimic the look of
traditionally-animated films, including the use of squiggles for fur and watercolor brush strokes for elements such as trees and bushes. To emphasize Katie Mitchell's emotions during certain scenes, the team additionally implemented a technique called "Katie-Vision", which implements stock 2D and live-action footage alongside the CG animation. When it came to designing the robot elements, the animators went for a sleeker, polished design to contrast with the watercolor style for the humans. For the PAL MAX Prime robots, animation supervisor Alan Hawkins invented a method that allows the robots to break apart mid-movement via negative space, inspired by the morphing effects used for the
T-1000 as seen in the film
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. According to Hawkins, he invented tools that would allow animators to "slice through the character [like a knife]", and allowed each one to have their different approach as well. Mike Lasker served as visual effects supervisor after having previously worked on
Into the Spider-Verse, while Lindsey Olivares served as the film's lead character and overall production designer. Animation work begun in May 2019, as confirmed by animator Nick Kondo on Twitter. The film was officially completed on September 16, 2020. ==Release==