When 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.”
