Christopher Miller and Phil Lord's career has been defined by a compulsion to take on seemingly impossible adaptations or concepts—and then an unerring instinct to turn them into successful films and television shows. Just a few months ago, Disney gave the two directors the keys to the Han Solo standalone film. Now comes the news that Serial host Sarah Koenig and her producers have chosen Lord and Miller to help adapt the wildly successful podcast to television. The project hasn't landed at a network yet, but the plan is to pitch to cable networks as a "series based on the experience of making the hugely successful podcast."
Lord and Miller have become gurus of the "how will they do that?" adaptation, taking on unfilmable premises and open-ended properties and expertly crafting them into box office juggernauts that also happen to be critical darlings. So it makes sense that Koenig & co. would turn to them amidst all the other pitches to make Serial work on television. In light of yet another Sisyphean adaptive task before them, we decided to rank all the Lord and Miller-directed projects by degree of difficulty. (While they directed the pilot episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, they had no hand in creating the show, so we're leaving that one off.) Keep in mind, this isn't a value judgment on the end product—it's just a look at how they manage to turn the quixotic into the kickass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ceXQaPQD6k
7. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (2009)
It's still a surprise that this adaptation of Judi and Ron Barrett's beloved picture book is as gorgeous and funny as it is. But the idea of an animated film adaptation of a kids' book becoming a success isn't nearly as rare as some of Lord and Miller's other creative coups. The two have yet to swing and miss—they just didn't have to swing as hard this time around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFdWp-GfgIo
6. Last Man On Earth (2015)
If this show managed to sustain Will Forte's utter loneliness for longer than the pilot, this would be much higher on the list. Even still, upending the usual tropes of a post-apocalyptic setting and turning them into a single-camera comedy isn't an easy lift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZFdz2vwU20
5. Clone High (2003)
Lord and Miller's first directing gig was at the helm of this animated series that followed clones of famous historical figures (Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, and Gandhi are the leads) as they navigate high school together. The pilot failed at Fox, then got picked up by MTV, only to be cancelled before all 13 episodes could air in the US (due to international protests over the depiction of Gandhi as a fast-talking party monster). But it has achieved cult status, and it was the first sign that the directing duo could succeed with dizzyingly complex premises.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLoKtb4c4W0
4. 21 Jump Street (2012)
Fox's late-'80s undercover high school detective drama was most notable for launching Johnny Depp's career; 25 years later, the idea of a film adaptation wasn't exactly an exciting prospect. But then word came down that instead the movie would jump genres to be a fast-paced comedy starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. Somehow, in Lord and Miller's hands, Jump Street became not only a comedy success, but a franchise—and even better, one that lampoons the sequelitis that's so endemic in Hollywood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATXbJjuZqbc
3. Serial (2014)
So it won't be a show about the Adnan Syed case, but instead a cable series about the experience of creating the limited-run podcast. We have no idea how that's going to work. Is it like The Newsroom or BBC's The Hour but for radio journalism? Will it dramatize a public radio setting more effectively than the Veronica Mars movie or Parks and Recreation? Or will they just cast Cecily Strong and turn the SNL parody into a two-hour extravaganza? trusting Lord and Miller, Koenig and her producers seem to suggest there's something coming out of left field.
2. Star Wars Anthology: Han Solo (2018)
Patton Oswalt has a great bit in which he lambasts George Lucas' Star Wars prequels for suggesting fans wanted to see what Darth Vader and Boba Fett were like as little kids. So a standalone film about the younger years of the Star Wars universe's most beloved rogue is a daunting task indeed. If you want to be cynical about it, it's a blatant attempt to hook a younger generation on already established characters so they continue to consume older films; that alternate-take formula that has become standard operating procedure for Disney, but Lord and Miller have already proven adept at elevating a business-first formula into a legitimately enjoyable movie. After all, they did it with...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ_JOBCLF-I
1. The Lego Movie (2014)
If you had to pick a pop-culture headline that no one enjoyed reading, "Children's Toy Headed to the Big Screen" would be a frontrunner. Think Battleship, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, or Michael Bay's Transformers films. That's the tainted arena Lord and Miller stepped into with this film, and they walked out as undisputed adaptation champions. According to co-director Chris McKay, "We took something you could claim is the most cynical cash grab in cinematic history, basically a 90-minute LEGO commercial, and turned it into a celebration of creativity, fun, and invention." (That it was timed perfectly to the meteoric rise to movie stardom for Chris Pratt didn't hurt either.) Everything is awesome, indeed.
