The Electric State Budget

What Is the Budget of The Electric State?

The Electric State (2025), directed by Anthony and Joe Russo and released by Netflix, was produced on a reported budget of $320 million, making it one of the most expensive films ever made and among the costliest Netflix originals to date. Based on Simon Stalenhag's 2018 illustrated novel of the same name, the film is set in a retro-futuristic 1990s America where autonomous robots once served alongside humans before a catastrophic event left them wandering the landscape as abandoned relics.

The Russo Brothers, coming off their massive success directing Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame for Marvel Studios, brought their blockbuster sensibility to what was originally conceived as a melancholic, atmospheric story about a teenager searching for her missing brother across a decaying technological landscape. The $320 million price tag reflected the extensive visual effects work required to populate the film with hundreds of unique robot designs, digital environments, and large-scale action sequences that expanded significantly beyond the source material's contemplative tone.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

The $320 million budget was distributed across several major production areas:

• Visual Effects and Robot Animation: The film's central production challenge was creating a world populated by hundreds of distinct robot characters, ranging from humanoid companions to massive industrial machines. Each robot required individual design, modeling, rigging, and animation work. The VFX workload, spanning thousands of shots across the film's runtime, likely consumed the single largest share of the budget, potentially exceeding $150 million for digital creature work and environment creation alone.
• Above-the-Line Talent: The cast included Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan (in a dual role), and Woody Harrelson providing voice work. The Russo Brothers' directing fees, combined with lead actor compensation and producer deals, represented a substantial above-the-line spend consistent with a production of this scale.
• Production Design and Practical Sets: The retro-futuristic 1990s setting required extensive production design to create a world that blended period-appropriate American landscapes with decaying futuristic technology. Filming took place primarily in Atlanta, Georgia, utilizing both practical sets and location work that would later be augmented with digital extensions.
• Reshoots and Extended Post-Production: Principal photography ran from October 2022 through early February 2023 under the working title "Stormwind." Reshoots took place from March 20 through April 5, 2024, adding additional production costs. The extended gap between principal photography and reshoots, combined with a lengthy post-production period for VFX completion, inflated the final budget beyond initial projections.
• Music, Sound Design, and Delivery: Composer Alan Silvestri, in his third collaboration with the Russo Brothers, scored the film. Sound design for the robot characters required creating distinct audio signatures for each machine type. Netflix's global delivery pipeline, including dubbing and subtitling for worldwide release, added distribution-side costs.

How Does The Electric State's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

At $320 million, The Electric State ranks among the most expensive productions in film history. Comparing it with similar large-scale sci-fi productions and Netflix originals:

• The Gray Man (2022): Budget $200,000,000 | Netflix. The Russo Brothers' previous Netflix collaboration cost $120 million less, making The Electric State a 60% budget increase for the same directing team on the same platform. The Gray Man received similarly mixed reviews but established the Russos as Netflix's go-to blockbuster directors.
• Red Notice (2021): Budget $200,000,000 | Netflix. Previously Netflix's most expensive original before The Electric State surpassed it. Starred Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot. Both films illustrate Netflix's willingness to spend at theatrical-blockbuster levels for content that drives subscriber engagement.
• Avengers: Endgame (2019): Budget $356,000,000 | Worldwide $2,799,439,100. The Russos' Marvel capstone cost more but generated nearly $2.8 billion theatrically. The comparison highlights how theatrical distribution provides a revenue pathway that streaming-only releases lack, making high budgets harder to justify on pure financial returns.
• Rebel Moon (2023-2024): Budget $166,000,000 (Part One) | Netflix. Zack Snyder's two-part sci-fi epic cost roughly half of The Electric State per installment and received similarly poor reviews, raising questions about Netflix's return on investment for big-budget genre films.
• Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017): Budget $177,200,000 | Worldwide $225,856,537. Luc Besson's VFX-heavy sci-fi adaptation is a cautionary comparison: a visually ambitious film based on beloved source material that was critically panned and commercially catastrophic. The Electric State's streaming model insulates it from this kind of box office failure, but the critical reception parallels are notable.

The Electric State Box Office Performance

The Electric State was released directly on Netflix on March 14, 2025, bypassing theatrical distribution entirely. As a streaming-only release, the film has no traditional box office figures. Netflix reported the following viewership data:

• Production Budget: $320,000,000
• Theatrical Gross: N/A (streaming-only release)
• First-Half 2025 Viewership: 158,200,000 hours watched
• Full-Year 2025 Viewership: 3,800,000,000 minutes
• Netflix Ranking (First Half 2025): 7th among all Netflix films
• Netflix Ranking (Full Year 2025): 8th among general audience films

Netflix does not disclose internal profitability metrics for individual titles, making it impossible to calculate a traditional ROI. The platform evaluates content investments based on subscriber acquisition, retention, and engagement rather than per-title revenue. At 158.2 million hours in its first six months, The Electric State performed respectably by Netflix's volume standards, ranking 7th among all Netflix films for the first half of 2025.

However, the $320 million production cost raises questions about whether the viewership justified the investment. Netflix's own internal valuation models reportedly estimate a "cost per hour watched" metric for each title. At $320 million for 3.8 billion minutes (approximately 63.3 million equivalent full viewings of a roughly 100-minute film), the per-viewing cost is significantly higher than Netflix's average for original content. Whether this level of spending delivers proportional value in subscriber growth remains a matter of internal Netflix calculus that the company does not share publicly.

The Electric State Production History

The rights to Simon Stalenhag's illustrated novel were acquired in 2017, shortly before the book's English-language publication. The novel, originally published in Swedish, tells a quiet, melancholic story of a teenager and her toy robot companion traveling across a decaying American landscape populated by abandoned autonomous machines. The visual style, rendered in Stalenhag's signature blend of mundane suburbia and towering sci-fi machinery, attracted immediate film interest.

Andy Muschietti (It) was initially attached to direct before the Russo Brothers took over the project. The Russos and their writing team, including Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (their longtime Marvel collaborators), significantly expanded the story's scope, adding large-scale action sequences and a broader mythology around the robot uprising that the novel only implied. This tonal shift from contemplative road-trip narrative to blockbuster action would become a central point of critical discussion upon release.

Principal photography began in October 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia, under the working title "Stormwind." The production was briefly paused on November 4, 2022, after a crew member died in an off-set car accident, a tragedy that cast a somber shadow over the shoot. Filming wrapped in early February 2023, followed by an extensive post-production period focused on the film's thousands of VFX shots.

Reshoots took place from March 20 through April 5, 2024, over a year after principal photography wrapped. The extended timeline between initial filming and reshoots suggested either significant creative retooling or VFX-dependent sequences that could not be fully evaluated until digital elements were sufficiently complete. The film ultimately premiered on Netflix on March 14, 2025, roughly two and a half years after cameras first rolled.

Awards and Recognition

The Electric State received minimal awards recognition, with its primary notices coming in the form of negative attention. The film was nominated for several Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Director (Anthony and Joe Russo), and Worst Screenplay, reflecting the critical community's unfavorable assessment.

The film also received nominations at the Kids' Choice Awards, acknowledging its appeal to younger audiences drawn to the robot characters and Millie Bobby Brown's star power. From a technical standpoint, the film's robot designs and world-building received some positive attention from VFX industry publications, though this did not translate into major guild nominations. The disconnect between the production's enormous budget and its awards trajectory underscored the critical consensus that the film's technical ambition was not matched by its storytelling execution.

Critical Reception

The Electric State received overwhelmingly negative reviews, earning a 14% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 158 reviews (with an average score of 3.7 out of 10) and a 30 out of 100 on Metacritic, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews." The Rotten Tomatoes consensus stated: "Lumbering along like a giant automaton, The Electric State has plenty of hardware to back it up but none of the spark that'd make it come to life."

The most consistent criticism targeted the disconnect between the source material's tone and the film's execution. Stalenhag's novel is a quiet, atmospheric meditation on technological decay and human isolation, rendered in painterly illustrations that suggest rather than explain. Critics argued the Russo Brothers replaced this melancholy with generic blockbuster spectacle, inflating a personal story into a hollow action franchise vehicle. Multiple reviewers described the film as "obvious, garish, and just plain dumb," a sharp rebuke of the $320 million investment.

Millie Bobby Brown's lead performance received mixed notices, with some critics praising her commitment to a role that required significant emotional range and others finding the character underwritten. Chris Pratt's supporting turn and Ke Huy Quan's dual role drew similar divided responses. The robot designs, particularly Woody Harrelson's voice performance as the companion robot Mr. Peanut, were cited as bright spots in an otherwise poorly received production. The film's 14% Rotten Tomatoes score places it among the worst-reviewed major productions of 2025, a sobering result for a $320 million investment from two directors who previously helmed two of the highest-grossing films in cinema history.