From directing The Lego Movie to becoming a single entity, Phil Lord and Chris Miller have had quite the ascent. Now, sending one of the globe’s best actors to his cosmic doom in Project Hail Mary, they’re aiming for the stars
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hen Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were starting out in Hollywood – long before they became a popcorn-flick industry unto themselves with The Lego Movie, the Jump Street films, the Spider-Verse franchise and their latest, Project Hail Mary – the duo found themselves summoned before a panel at the formidable Directors Guild of America (DGA). Lord and Miller wanted to be credited, as they would be for the rest of their career, as co-directors, and that was something the DGA – which, as Miller puts it, prefers “one set of hands on the steering wheel” – was uneasy about. In order to get approval, the pair would have to plead their case to some very famous peers.
“It was like a Senate hearing,” says Miller, his eyes widening at the memory. “Steven Spielberg and Jon Favreau and all these people asking questions like: ‘All right, but what happens if one of you gets sick? What are you gonna do?’ It was … interesting.”
Fortunately, justices Spielberg and Favreau ruled in the duo’s favour. Meeting Lord and Miller in a London hotel suite, it’s hard to imagine the verdict going any other way. Professionally, they come as a pair. Speak to the duo for more than a few minutes and its clear that they operate on a wavelength shared with few others. They don’t finish each other’s sentences as much as finish each other’s ideas; a mind-meld forged when the Miami-born Lord and Miller, who is from near Seattle, met as undergraduates at the Ivy League Dartmouth college.
