Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Philip Anderson Lord (born July 12, 1975) and Christopher Robert Miller (born September 23, 1975) are American filmmakers.

They are the creators and co-stars of the adult animated sitcom Clone High (2002–2003, 2023–present), and the writers and directors of the animated films Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and The Lego Movie (2014), as well as the directors of the live-action comedy film 21 Jump Street (2012) and its sequel, 22 Jump Street (2014).

In 2003, the two were tapped to write a screenplay for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, their first feature film.

After a year working on the script, they were fired for story issues and replaced with new writers, who after a year were fired themselves.

Lord and Miller were re-hired in 2006.

The two completely redid the script, this time with the creative input of their crew.

The new draft had the protagonist as a failed inventor who wanted to prove himself to his town.

The two were almost fired again after Amy Pascal, the head of Sony Pictures at the time, criticized the film for a lack of story.

Although the film succeeded on the comedic front in the animatic stage, Pascal cited the lack of an anchoring relationship in the film as a failure in the story telling.

Unable to create new characters and environments to suit the new story demands, the two elevated the character of the tackle shop extra to be the protagonist's father, thereby creating the relationship Pascal had requested.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was released in 2009 to positive reviews.

After Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was released, the two sought to try to make something different and pitched themselves as possible directors for the 21 Jump Street script that Michael Bacall and Jonah Hill had written.

The studio agreed and the two directed their first live-action R-rated film, released to critical acclaim, which led to the production of the sequel 22 Jump Street.

In an interview with Robert K. Elder for his book The Best Film You've Never Seen, Lord stated that "in an animated feature, you remake the movie three or four times, and it's really easy to get bummed out that the way you did it before didn't get greenlit, didn't get paid, and you're making a totally different version of that movie."

During the production of 21 Jump Street, they pitched a take on a possible Lego film to Dan Lin.

Lin and Warner Bros. loved the take, so Lord and Miller wrote and eventually directed their third feature film together, The Lego Movie.

The duo were picked by Warner Bros. to write the story treatment for the then-upcoming superhero film The Flash, but dropped out of the project in favor of directing the then-untitled Solo: A Star Wars Story.

They have also worked on the television series The Last Man on Earth (2015–18) for Fox, Unikitty! (2017–2020) for Cartoon Network, and most recently The Afterparty (2022-23) for Apple TV+.

Lord is from Miami; his mother is a Cuban-born psychologist, and his father retired from the aviation business and before that directed a dance company, Fusion, for 10 years.

Miller is from the Seattle area, where his father runs a lumber mill.

Lord and Miller both grew up making short films with an affinity for animation.

They both attended Dartmouth College, where they first met, and had separate comics in the school newspaper, The Dartmouth.

Lord was a member of Amarna, a co-ed undergraduate society while Miller was a brother at Alpha Chi Alpha.

During his time in college, Miller met his girlfriend, now wife.

During their time at Dartmouth, the school paper published a profile on Miller, which caught the attention of Michael Eisner, then chairman of Disney.

According to Lord, Eisner brought the profile to the attention of his fellow Disney executives who offered to set up a meeting with Miller.

Miller agreed to the meeting as long as he could bring Lord.

After three months, the two moved to Los Angeles and after one meeting were offered a two-year development deal at Walt Disney Television Animation.

Though nothing they pitched made it to air, they produced the pilot to Clone High, which was subsequently dropped by Fox.

After they wrote and produced on a series of sitcoms, MTV informed the duo that they were interested in purchasing a 13-episode season of Clone High.

Although the show was met with acclaim, MTV canceled the series after hunger strike protests occurred in India over the show's portrayal of Gandhi as a motor-mouthed partier.

The duo were picked by Sony Pictures Animation in 2015 to create an animated Spider-Man film, with the option to direct.

In January 2017, Lord and Miller began directing the then-untitled film Solo: A Star Wars Story, a standalone Star Wars movie based on the Han Solo character.

On June 20, 2017, it was reported that they had been fired from the project by Lucasfilm, after over four-and-a-half months of filming, about three-quarters through principal photography.

Lucasfilm announced that "creative differences" were the reason, with Entertainment Weekly reporting that Lord and Miller were going off-script and trying to make the film into more of a comedy.

They were unwilling to compromise with Lucasfilm and writer Lawrence Kasdan on the direction of the film, preferring their vision.

Lord and Miller are best known for working on The Lego Movie and Spider-Verse franchises, which won them the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and a nomination for the aforementioned award for producing the sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023).

The film was eventually made as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), which the duo produced and which Lord co-wrote.

The duo have developed a live-action/animated series, Son of Zorn, for Fox, with Jason Sudeikis voicing the lead role of animated character Zorn, and Johnny Pemberton and Cheryl Hines playing the live-action roles.

They are producing a cable-TV drama based on the popular NPR/This American Life spinoff podcast Serial.