Category: 2019. Love, Death & Robots. Volume 1

How David Fincher and Tim Miller’s ‘Love, Death and Robots’ Made the Leap to Netflix

David Fincher & Tim Miller, Executive Producers
SXSW Film Festival. Austin, TX
(Daniel Boczarski / Getty Images, Zimbio)

Brandon Katz
March 11, 2019
Observer

Steven Spielberg may or may not be marshaling forces against Netflix. The Academy may or may not have awarded Green Book Best Picture as a slight to the streamer’s unanimously praised Roma. A handful of power players in Hollywood still dismiss direct-to-consumer platforms as secondary hubs of entertainment. But they’ll be on the wrong side of history.

Some of cinema’s greatest filmmakers are flocking to the world of streaming, tempted by its deep pockets and creative freedom (hello, Martin Scorsese). Roma didn’t need to win Best Picture for Netflix to make a powerful point about its place in the industry—with an increasingly ambitious library of original shows and films, the service has already become arguably the No. 1 destination for entertainment. Adding directors David Fincher and Tim Miller’s new animated anthology series Love, Death and Robots to the mix just further underlines that fact.

The creative duo, who boast three Academy Award nominations between them, originally viewed the series—a collection of animated short stories that spans various genres including science fiction, fantasy, horror and comedy—as a film. But up against Hollywood’s risk-averse studios, they could never get a firm green light. Enter Netflix, which has emerged as a home for the kind of daring, left-field storytelling we rarely see in mainstream cinema.

“We got a ‘yes’ [from film studios] for a while here, a ‘yes’ for a while there, and then everybody starts on the whole ‘Yeah, but anthology, yeah, but anthology,’ and, you know, ‘Is it going to be confusing?’ And it’s like, why would a buffet be confusing?” Fincher told Observer at SXSW. “Why would it be confusing that you can have fruit or pancakes? Really, streaming services are kind of the perfect place to do something like this, because, you know, these [shorts] are distractions. But they’re really detailed in their execution, and a lot of love and care went into it.”

Netflix offered Fincher and Miller the opportunity—and a ton of freedom—to breathe life into their vision, so it’s easy to see why they ultimately landed there. The partnership helped Love, Death and Robots truly take shape.

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David Fincher. SXSW Film Festival. Austin, TX
(Daniel Boczarski / Getty Images, Zimbio)

David Fincher on If He’d Ever Direct a Superhero Film

Brandon Katz
March 9, 2019
Observer

David Fincher Wants to Destroy the Concept of the Half-Hour and Hour-Long Show

David Fincher (Patrick Lewis/Starpix for Netflix/REX/Shutterstock, IndieWire)

SXSW: Fincher and Tim Miller talk about their decade-long journey to making the new Netflix animation anthology “Death, Love and Robots.”

Chris O’Falt
Mar 9, 2019
IndieWire

The concept of an anthology animated short series, made by different artists from around the world, was a near-impossible pitch for executive producers David Fincher and Tim Miller to sell. Following the SXSW premiere of six of their 18 shorts — which will air on Netflix under the “Love, Death and Robots” banner — the duo revealed they had received countless rejections (though one unnamed studio said yes, before, as Miller described it, “they chickened out”) until the show eventually landed at Netflix.

“It was a very difficult thing to pitch a movie studio because it’s not often we’ll see it with all the credits in the middle,” said Fincher, referring to the fact that the 90-minute program the SXSW audience had just watched included end credits following each of the six shorts. “You want to move on to the next. For a streaming service it’s perfect.”

The idea that the shorts could be different lengths and have no narrative connective tissue was perfect for the on-demand nature of a subscription streaming service. According to Fincher, dating back to “House of Cards” and “Mindhunter,” his conversations with Netflix, including Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, have been centered around the need to break free of the half-hour and hour-long format.

“We have to get rid of the 22-minute [length of a half-hour show with commercials] and 48-minute [length of an hour-long show with commercials] because there’s this Pavlovian response to this segmentation that to me seems anathema to storytelling,” said Fincher. “You want the story to be as long as it needs to be to be at maximum impact or entertainment value proposition.”

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LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. 💀 Trailer

March 8, 2019
Netflix (YouTube)

Militarized werewolves, interstellar aliens, demons from hell and more are unleashed in 18 NSFW animated stories.

Watch LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS on Netflix

Follow LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS on Instagram & Reddit

More details, including synopses of each short story in the Episode Guide

LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. ❤️ Trailer

March 1, 2019
Netflix (YouTube)

Tales of love, tales of heartbreak, tales of inter-dimensional fornication all converge in 18 NSFW animated stories.

Watch LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS on Netflix

Follow LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS on Instagram & Reddit

More details, including synopses of each short story in the Episode Guide

LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS: Official Trailer, Poster & Release Date

February 14, 2019
Netflix

Sentient Dairy Products, Rogue Werewolf Soldiers, Robots Gone Wild, Sexy Cyborgs, Alien Spiders And Blood-thirsty Demons From Hell Converge In An 185-minute Genre Orgy Of Stories Not Suitable For The Mainstream.

This spring, 18 animated short stories presented by Tim Miller (Deadpool, upcoming untitled Terminator sequel) and David Fincher (MINDHUNTER, Gone Girl, House of Cards) land on Netflix in it’s first ever animated adult anthology series. Love Death and Robots premieres March 15th only on Netflix.

The full roster of stories will cover a variety of adult topics including racism, government, war, free will, and human nature. The anthology collection spans the science fiction, fantasy, horror and comedy genres and each short has a unique animation style: from traditional 2D to photo-real 3D CGI. The creators were assembled for a global calling for best in class animators from all over the world including artists from France, Korea, Hungary, Canada and the US among others. The series draws inspiration from the eclectic and provocative comic book material from the 1970’s that influenced both Miller’s and Fincher’s formative interests in storytelling.

More details, including synopses of each short story in the Episode Guide

Watch LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS on Netflix

Neil Kellerhouse (Netflix)

“Love, Death & Robots”: Tim Miller and David Fincher’s Animated Anthology Series for Netflix

Sentient dairy products, werewolf soldiers, robots gone wild, garbage monsters, cyborg bounty hunters, alien spiders and blood-thirsty demons from hell converge in an 185-minute genre orgy of NSFM (not suitable for mainstream) shorts.

January 7, 2019
Netflix

Netflix announces Love, Death & Robots, an animated anthology series presented by Tim Miller (Deadpool, upcoming untitled Terminator sequel) and David Fincher (MINDHUNTER, Gone Girl, House of Cards).

Love, Death & Robots is a collection of animated short stories that span the science fiction, fantasy, horror and comedy genres. With a bold approach to each story’s narrative, episodes are intended to be easy to watch and hard to forget.

The series draws inspiration from the eclectic and provocative genre material that influenced both Miller’s and Fincher’s formative interests in storytelling. Miller says, “Love, Death & Robots is my dream project, it combines my love of animation and amazing stories. Midnight movies, comics, books and magazines of fantastic fiction have inspired me for decades, but they were relegated to the fringe culture of geeks and nerds of which I was a part. I’m so fucking excited that the creative landscape has finally changed enough for adult-themed animation to become part of a larger cultural conversation.”

The production of Love, Death & Robots united a global animation community, calling on the talents and unique perspectives of innovative animation studios, directors and artists from around the world. Eighteen stories in all, each film is painstakingly crafted, charged with a mix of energy, action and unapologetic dark humor.

Executive produced by David Fincher, Tim Miller, Jennifer Miller and Josh Donen, the series brings together world-class animation creators and captivating stories for the first anthology of short animated stories guaranteed to deliver a unique and visceral viewing experience.

Each episode in the series:

  • Is a succinct 5 to 15 minutes in length.
  • Has a unique animation style, from traditional 2D to photo-real 3D CGI.
  • Is created by a different team of filmmakers from around the world.
  • Is aimed at an adult audience.

About Blur Studio

Blur Studio is an award-winning animation production company that creates content for games, films, and television. Founded and led by “Deadpool” director Tim Miller, Blur has roots in making high-end trailers and cinematics for the game industry, visual effects for blockbuster features, and recently led the production of the Netflix animated anthology series “Love, Death & Robots.”

About Netflix

Netflix is the world’s leading internet entertainment service with 130 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on any Internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments.

Netflix: “Love, Death & Robots”

Love, Death & Robots, will have its world premiere at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival (March 8–17, 2019. Austin, TX)

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