Creator / Phil Lord & Chris Miller

That's Miller on the left and Lord on the right.

Philip Anderson Lord (born July 12, 1975) and Christopher Robert Miller (born September 23, 1975) are Hollywood's duo of the 21st century. Lord and Miller met at Dartmouth and became inseparable, going on to create the Cult Classic MTV animated series Clone High in 2002. Despite lasting only one season, many of their later works harken back to its sharp humor and creative visual style. They're returning to work on the revived series for HBO Max.

Lord and Miller moved to feature films with the 2009 animated movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and later to their first R-rated, live-action feature 21 Jump Street in 2012. They stayed on to direct 22 Jump Street in 2014, as well as The LEGO Movie earlier that same year. They've also produced other projects in film and on television, as well as served as guest writers and directors on TV shows like How I Met Your Mother and The Last Man on Earth.

Afterwards, the two were attached to direct the Star Wars anthology movie Solo before leaving the project a mere few weeks before filming wrapped due to Creative Differences. It didn't stop them from bouncing back though, as they wrote and produced both Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse^note Lord co-wrote the script with co-director Rodney Rothman, while the duo stayed on as producers and The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, released in 2018 and 2019 respectively to universal acclaim. In addition to that, they'll hop back on the director's saddle with an adaptation of : Project Hail Mary (an adaptation of The Martian author Andy Weir's novel of the same name). They also signed first-look deals with Sony Pictures Television for overseeing Spider-Man-related TV series^note with the possibility of a television series spin-off of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and with Universal Pictures.

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Works Lord and Miller have credits on:

Film

• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009; directors, writers)
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013; writers, executive producers)
• 21 Jump Street (2012; directors)
  • 22 Jump Street (2014; directors, producers)
• The LEGO Movie (2014; directors, writers)
  • The LEGO Batman Movie (2017; producers)
  • The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017; producers)
  • The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (2019; writers, producers)
• Storks (2016; executive producers)
• Brigsby Bear (2017; producers)
• Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018; executive producers)^note They were initially the directors of the film until conflicts over the creative direction of the film, along with issues concerning their overall efficiency, led to their firing; Ron Howard took over for them and reshot most of the movie. The theatrical cut of the film is said to be made up of 30% of their original work.
• Smallfoot (2018; executive producers)
• Spider-Man: Spider-Verse
  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018; writers^note Phil Lord only, with Rodney Rothman, producers)
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023; writers^note with David Callaham, producers)
• The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021; producers)
• America: The Motion Picture (2021; producers)
• Cocaine Bear (2023; producers)
• Strays (2023; producers)

• Project Hail Mary (2026; directors, producers)

Televison

• Clone High (2002-2003, 2023-present; creators, writers, directors, executive producers, voice directors)
• How I Met Your Mother (2005-2006; writers, producers)^note Wrote "Sweet Taste of Liberty" and "Belly Full of Turkey"
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013; directors, writers)^note Directed "Pilot"
• The Last Man on Earth (2015-2018; directors, executive producers)^note Directed "Alive in Tucson" and "The Elephant in the Room"
• Son of Zorn (2016-2017; executive producers)
• Unikitty! (2017-2020); executive producers)
• Bless the Harts (2019; executive producers)
• The Afterparty (2022: creator, director ^note Chris Miller only, writers, executive producers)

• Silk Spider Society (TBA, executive producers)
• Spider Man Noir adaptation (TBA, executive producers)

Tropes associated with their works:

• Affectionate Parody: Some of their projects also work as Deconstructive Parodies like The LEGO Movie and 21 Jump Street, but they tend to lean more towards this trope.
  • Clone High parodies the generation it takes place in. Season 1 in particular makes fun of Teen Drama shows that were popular in its day. It uses the concept of a high school that educates clones of historical figures to show how different these people would be in a completely different environment.
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs parodies disaster films.
  • Their 21 Jump Street movie not only parodies every trope of the original series, it also makes fun of reboots and high-school movies in general.
  • 22 Jump Street parodies college movies and action sequels.
  • The LEGO Movie parodies summer blockbuster movies, merchandise films, and chosen one stories.
  • America: The Motion Picture is a comedic sendup of everything that is considered American. This includes the country's historical icons, folklore, politics, franchise blockbusters, and stories about the American Revolution.
  • The Afterparty is a comedic take on murder mystery stories and various other genres like rom-coms, action movies, horror thrillers, and arthouse films.
  • Strays (2023) is a hard R-rated parody of "talking animal adventure" children's movies like Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey.
• Author Appeal:
  • You might notice that their films star protagonists with little confidence who have to sell their worth to their peers.
  • Heavy improvisation.
  • Children's relationships with their fathers. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie, Into the Spider-Verse, Across the Spider-Verse, and The Mitchells Vs. The Machines all have conflict between a child taking a different, usually more creative path than the one their father wants, and the two ultimately coming to understand each other at the end. Mitchells and Across the Spider-Verse are the only cases to date that are father/daughter instead of father/son.
  • Bright colors and glitchy effects show up a lot in their animated films, especially the Spider-Verse films (which uses glitchy imagery as a plot point) and The Mitchells Vs. The Machines.
  • They also really enjoy blending elements of 2D and 3D animation together, mostly with digital or scanned 2D artwork overlayed onto CGI renders. The Spider-Verse movies are their most famous and ambitious examples, but America: The Motion Picture also uses the same style (albeit simplified and with far fewer traditionally-drawn frames), and The Mitchells vs. the Machines heavily employs animated watercolor art for its effects and on several characters.
• Creative Differences: They departed during production of Solo due to disagreements with producer Kathleen Kennedy and writer Lawrence Kasdan. In fact, both Kennedy and Kasdan felt that their fondness for improv got on a lot of people's nerves with Kasdan even personally coming to the set to berate them for it (leading to an agreement that they would shoot at least one take exactly as written by him before letting the actors go nuts). Alden Ehrenreich was concerned as well since he felt that his portrayal of Han Solo could end up being a caricature of Ace Ventura. As a result, Lord and Miller were asked to depart as directors and Ron Howard was brought in to replace them.
• Denser and Wackier: Part of their Signature Style is they make films that are very manic, insane, and fast-paced. When they adapt something, you can bet it will take this route.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: They really love just letting the actors go off and do whatever they want. This ended up backfiring on them when they directed Solo, as their allowance for the actors to improvise ultimately led to Creative Differences and the duo exiting the project.
• In Name Only: Lord and Miller like to take existing properties and turn it into something completely new.
  • 21 Jump Street is a very loose adaptation of the series it is based on. Instead of making it a police procedural teen drama like the series, Lord & Miller took the same tropes and basic concept and preferred to make a film that was a lot more light-hearted and wacky compared to the show.
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs retains the title, premise, and a few illustrations from the original book. Otherwise, the entire plot and all of its characters are completely original.
  • Outside the concept of having multiple Spider-Heroes from across the multiverse meet, Spider Man Into The Spider-Verse has nothing to do with the plot of the 2014 Spider-Verse storyline from the comics, where hundreds of Spiders must come together to defeat Morlun and his family. In fact, it has far more in common with the plot of Spider-Men, as both have Peter Parker enter Miles' dimension and serve as a mentor for the novice superhero.
  • Cocaine Bear has very little in common with what happened in real life. The movie takes the insane concept of a bear who digests cocaine and turns it into a fun dark comedy-thriller about a massive sized bear who goes on a murderous rampage. In real life, the bear was much smaller and didn't harm anybody, dying shortly after the cocaine set in.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Their projects love to be nudge-nudge-wink-wink about what kind of story they're in. The LEGO Movie enjoys always reminding the audience that what they're watching is essentially a bunch of toys doing silly things, and 21 Jump Street is always winking at the audience about how it's a shameless reboot of a mildly popular show from The '80s.
• Medium Blending:
  • Their animated works often incorporate different animation styles, either for a gag or for stylization purposes. Clone High has a few bits with a live-action twist, The LEGO Movie (a 3D film) uses live-action footage as part of The Reveal, its sequel has a gag with a 2D "intermission" reel, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines (another 3D film) uses 2D animation for Katie's drawings. The Spider-Verse films have a similar effect by animating the Spider-People in specific ways based on their source universe (Peni Parker and Spider-Ham are in the style of anime and old 2D western cartoons respectively, for example), though the films are generally consistently animated in 3D barring a few cameo appearances by 2D or live-action characters.
  • The Afterparty was based entirely on this trope. The series is a about a retelling of a murder done in a different format with a separate style (accompanied by Aspect Ratio Switch) in line with their respective witnesses. Despite the show being in live-action, one of the episodes has a retelling presented in 2D animation.
• Meta Fiction: Their works have a meta-modernist element to them. They show how they are aware of audiences expectations and try to work them into the story and/or the characters. This is best shown in 21 Jump Street, The LEGO Movie, and their Spider-Verse movies.
• Parental Issues: Loving but complex father/child relationships are very common in their works such as Miles and Jefferson in Spiderman Into The Spiderverse, Tim and Flint in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Rick and Katie in The Mitchells vs. the Machines and Finn and his dad in The LEGO Movie,
• Production Posse: Aside from Lord and Miller themselves, the two have collaborated with Will Forte on Clone High, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, and The Last Man on Earth. They even gave him cameos in the first Cloudy, The LEGO Movie, and America: The Motion Picture. The latter two films serve as a meta joke to Forte's role on Clone High: he plays Abraham Lincoln in all three.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: A lot of their style is contingent on editing and improvisation, resulting in jokes that come at you like a high speed meteor shower.
• Reconstruction: As shown in In Name Only, Lord & Miller like to re-craft already existing properties. The two are well aware of modern audiences cynical expectations for cash grab reboots. In order to make a positive experience out of it, they take the extra step in playing along with those expectations and instead create something that reconstructs a lot of that old I.P's essential tropes. This is best shown in 21 Jump Street, Spider Man Into The Spiderverse, and The LEGO Movie.
• Rewatch Bonus: They might as well be the Edgar Wright of the animation medium with how their animated films have layers upon layers of Freeze Frame Bonuses and Funny Background Events that warrant multiple viewings to catch.
• Signature Style:
  • They are known for their unique sensibilities and maverick mindsets. They like to reinvent classic storytelling methods as well as the push the boundaries of not only creativity but also visual storytelling (particularly in the medium of animation) to help give fresh and unexpected takes on familiar concepts.
  • Their works have a meta-modernist element to them. They show a self-awareness toward audiences expectations for a character and they work them into the story rather than just be a wink at the audience.
  • Most of the films are usually an Affectionate Parody of and/or love letter to something (whether it's a children's book they hold dear, a crime drama show, teen dramas, their home country and its cultural exports, or a product that everybody loves). The Spider-Verse franchise pays homage to nearly every incarnation of the character across a variety of media as a major plot element. It leans more on the idealistic edge of the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism. The characters are flawed yet endearing and they have well developed chemistry with one another.
  • Their style of humor is a well-honed mix of meta-humor/fourth-wall leaning, smash cuts, subversions of dramatic moments, silly gags delivered at a fast pace, visual touches, good-natured humor, improvisation, and cutaway jokes. On the surface, most of their animated offerings compared to the very foul-mouthed 21 Jump Street might not seem like they have much in common, but their jokes are delivered in very similar and effective fashion.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism:
  • All of their films lean closer to the idealistic side. They are filled with a sense of fun, likability, good-natured humor, and genuine heart.
  • Clone High started off as a irreverent parody of the cheap gimmicks and corniness of teen dramas with a bit of a cynical edge. It has shifted more towards the idealistic side since the revival.
• Sliding Scale Of Silliness Vs Seriousness: They make highly entertaining projects that are insane, wacky, comedic, wild, frantic, and silly while still having a lot of heart and intelligence.
• Stylistic Suck: When it's funny, the quality of the film's animation will drop considerably. In terms of their live action work, invoked Special Effect Failures like very obvious green screens are abound. In fact, in some montages in their films, they include pictures that anyone with Google could literally pull from search results.
• What Could Have Been:
  • As mentioned above, Lord and Miller were attached to Solo for four months before getting removed due to Creative Differences (mainly their insistence on the actors improvising many of their lines). Supposedly, the film was going in a much more comedic direction under their helm, which didn't suit the more-serious tone producer Kathleen Kennedy wanted for it.
  • They were on the shortlist to direct Steve Jobs before Danny Boyle officially signed on.

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