We Spoke To A Very Happy Phil Lord, Chris Miller, And Mike Rianda About Their Oscar Nomination For ‘The Mitchells Vs. The Machines’

This morning, The Mitchells vs. the Machines was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature and, this may come as no surprise: director Mike Rianda, and producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, are very happy today. It’s been a long, kind of strange road for The Mitchells vs. the Machines. This pretty weird movie was supposed to be a Sony theatrical release, but, due to the pandemic, Sony sold the domestic distribution rights to Netflix. And then, it seems, literally everyone watched this movie. As Rianda, Lord, and Miller say ahead, while making it they were concerned no would would like it. Then, with the pandemic, they were concerned no one would see it. And, now today, The Mitchells vs. the Machines is an Oscar nominee.

Do you know what’s funny We’ve spoken in passing a lot but I have never interviewed you guys. This is it.

Phil Lord: This is the time. Get it all in. Ask them all.

I promise, you don’t want that. But I always like doing these, because everyone’s in a great mood.

Phil Lord: Yes, true. So true. True. I’m not exhausted. I’m not still wearing the bracelet from The Sparks concert last night.

You’ve had quite a 24 hours.

Phil Lord: I fell asleep in it.

Christopher Miller: I would say this is the most chipper I’ve been at 7:30 in the morning without having had any coffee.

It’s 10:30 here and I’m still tired. But, then again, I don’t have the adrenaline. I didn’t get nominated for anything this morning.

Phil Lord: Nominating you for best interview.

All right. I’m getting the adrenaline now. I haven’t won yet…

Phil Lord: Right. Feel it. You feel it

Mike Rianda: It’s a long way to victory though. It’s a long way to victory.

That’s true.

Christopher Miller: We have 73 nominees. So it’s an honor just to be a nominee.

The path to today seems fraught. The movie gets delayed, then moves from theatrical to Netflix. But then it was perfect timing because everyone saw this movie. Then you get an Oscar nomination.

Mike Rianda: I mean, because it was such a long journey to make it. And it took years and years, but we had this like world’s most wonderful team of people. So it was really a joy to work on and they created tools that are changing, the innovation and they’ve just been so wonderful. So it’s, basically, when the movie came out, we were just sort of trying to make everybody proud. It was kind of a weird coincidence that the movie is about a giant global apocalypse, sort of. And what you need to do in that. And it’s sort of like, hang close to your family and hang close to your relationships. And I think the whole world is going through that right now, because there’s a giant pandemic where people are having to sort of cling to their families and actually use technology. It’s the only way we can see each other right now. And just like the movie is about, you have to sort of find a good relationship with technology and figure out, because it’s sort of part of the family, how to live with it and have it reveal our humanity instead of hide it.

Phil Lord: And definitely felt like a movie that needed to be seen this year. And it was really exciting that Netflix loved it so much and wanted to put it out. You know, we were thinking to ourselves, well, when on earth could this come out Would families head out to a movie theater and feel comfortable

Christopher Miller: We still don’t know-

Phil Lord: But, thankfully, Netflix was so excited to put it out and as he said, it got so many more people seeing it than would’ve seen it otherwise at a time when it was really needed. So it was really special.

Was there a moment where you felt like no one’s ever going to see this

Christopher Miller: Every moment we worked on it.

Phil Lord: It was kind of like actually Netflix was like a guardian angel in a way, because it was supposed to come out in September 2020, and then it was October 2020. And then we were like, okay, maybe March 2021 And then as it just kept getting pushed, we were thinking when is this ever going to come out And we worked so hard on it and we’re so proud of it. And it’s so relevant to what people are going through right now. And then, Netflix came upon with just a lot of passion and love and excitement for the film. So it ended up being a wonderful thing, even though it wasn’t how we planned it.

Mike Rianda: We were at a studio that didn’t fire everybody right away. There were other places that, it was like, they were just massively up and Sony was like, No, we are holding the line, this is our film family. Like we’re keeping it going. So finding ways to put movies out was important, because it meant that our friends in different departments could keep working. So it was a real win-win when Netflix came knocking, and said, hey, incoming call, we’d like to make a big deal out of this movie. We’re like, Yes, thank you. Let’s all do that so that Jesse can keep his job in marketing.

I mean this as a compliment, but judging from your Twitter accounts, you really wanted this to happen today. It’s still shocking The Lego Movie didn’t get nominated. And I guess since then, have you been like we can’t take this for granted We have to be out there and talking this up

Phil Lord: Well, we certainly don’t take anything for granted, right We never know what’s going to happen. And we were hoping for something like this, because we were really proud of the film, [laughs] but we certainly have learned never to assume anything. So it’s been a great joy and relief today.

Christopher Miller: We’ve experienced every side of this. We missed out when The Lego Movie came out, but we also made a bunch of Lego afterwards. Now they sell those at the Academy store. We got a chance to win for Spider-Verse. It was such a proud moment for everybody to work on that movie. And you know, this movie is like those in the sense that it’s trying to do something that hasn’t been done before, it doesn’t look like any other movie. It’s innovative in every department and trying to move the ball forward in animation. And so when you do that, you’re like, I don’t know if anyone is going to like this. But who knows Let’s set out, let’s go make somebody’s favorite movie. And so when it gets traction, like Mitchells has gotten, and it becomes such a hit on streaming and it becomes whatever it was one of the top 10 streaming movies of the year…. and it just makes an impact. You are so happy for everybody, because they didn’t do it for that reason. They did it because they loved the media of animation.

Mike Rianda: Yeah. You just hope it connects with people and it’s been really super satisfying to see it.

Christopher Miller: And we couldn’t have made this movie anywhere else, you know That’s one of the things, it’s such a wild thing. It doesn’t follow a formula. Hey, here’s an original movie about my friend Mike and his family.

Well, spoiler, people really like this movie and you got nominated for an Oscar today. So I think it worked out.

Mike Rianda: It seems good. It seems good. It’s very nice. And it’s nice to hear from everybody. And my family, who the movie is based on earth, currently in the other room losing their minds. So that has been very gratifying too.

Christopher Miller: You know what else This is really silly, but who I’m super happy for is Katie Mitchell. Katie Mitchell is a film student. She’s bold and she’s queer. And she’s going to go find her people and this is how we’re sending her into college.

Mike Rianda: That’s sweet.

That’s a really nice sentiment. Also, best of luck going forward. You only have just under two months until you find out what happens next.

Phil Lord: Oh my God. It’s such a crazy long time. It’s going to be great.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.