Love, Death & Robots (stylized as LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS; represented in emoji form as ❤️❌🤖) is an adult animated anthology television series created by Tim Miller for Netflix. Although the series is produced by Blur Studio, its individual episodes are drawn from the work of an international variety of animation studios. The animations span the genres of comedy, horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Each episode is connected to one or more of the three titular concepts. Miller serves as the showrunner and producer alongside Joshua Donen, David Fincher, and Jennifer Miller. Most episodes are written by Philip Gelatt and are adaptations of short stories. The series evolved from an attempt by Fincher and Miller to produce a feature-length movie reboot of Heavy Metal. The planned anthology film languished in development hell for eleven years due to difficulties with securing the rights to the title, as well as the lack of studios willing to fund the project. Eventually, Netflix became interested in the idea and agreed to distribute it as a television series. The first season was released on March 15, 2019; the second on May 14, 2021; the third on May 20, 2022; and the fourth on May 15, 2025. The show has received positive reviews from critics who praise its voice acting, sound design, and unique approach of using a variety of animation styles and genres. It won several accolades from the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
Premise The animated series consists of a collection of short films, produced by different casts and crews. However, some episodes have some overlap in certain crew members. The series title refers to each episode's thematic connection to one or more of the three titular subjects. Beyond the themes and genres, there are no story connections between the shorts with the exception of Season 1's "Three Robots", which has a sequel (Season 3's "Three Robots: Exit Strategies").
Episodes
Production
Development
The project evolved from a late 2000s meeting in which David Fincher and Tim Miller decided to remake the 1981 film Heavy Metal. Announced in 2008, the project was to be produced by Paramount Pictures but Fincher and Miller had trouble getting the funding necessary for the project. The project was originally intended to be an anthology film with a budget of around $50 million, with several involved directors each handling different short segments and Blur Studio providing the animation. The directors' lineup included Miller, Fincher, James Cameron, Zack Snyder, Kevin Eastman, Gore Verbinski, Guillermo del Toro, Mark Osborne, Jeff Fowler, and Rob Zombie. The film was expected to have either eight or nine segments and be rated R like the original Heavy Metal film. On July 14, 2008, production for the film was halted due to Paramount Pictures dropping the project. The film was switched to Sony division Columbia Pictures, due to an ongoing conflict between the former studio and Fincher during the production of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In 2009, Eastman revealed that he reunited with Jack Black to make a comedic segment for the film. The former also revealed that Fincher and Cameron were originally intended to serve as executive producers of the film. The proposed movie eventually fell into development hell, as no companies were interested in distributing or producing the remake after Paramount Pictures abandoned it. The proposed movie idea was dropped because several studios considered it "too risqué for mainstream audiences." Miller commented that: "David really believes in the project. It's just a matter of time." In July 2011, it was announced at San Diego Comic-Con that filmmaker Robert Rodriguez purchased the film rights to Heavy Metal and planned to develop a remake at the newly founded Quick Draw Studios. On March 11, 2014, after creating his own television network, El Rey, Rodriguez decided instead to develop the film as a television series. However, Eastman revealed that he sold Heavy Metal and that the deal with Rodriguez was unlikely to stay standing. Netflix took interest in the idea and decided to greenlight the series: "Well, David Fincher and I had tried to get a Heavy Metal film made for years and years. I mean, hundreds of meetings. The original movie came out in [1981] and it was very inspirational to a lot of animators who wanted to do adult animation. So when I met David, we wanted to do something together and we said, 'What about doing a new Heavy Metal film?' because he was an animation fan, but the world just was not ready for it at the time. But in the ten years that we did meetings and tried to get the project going, the world came around to see adult animation as viable, and Netflix was the one that was willing to take a chance. And so here we are." The studio gave Fincher and Miller a total freedom to allow them to "breathe life into their vision". The series would be taking the name Love, Death & Robots instead. It would consist of 18 episodes ranging from 5 to 15 minutes including a wide range of animation styles from traditional 2D animation to photo-real 3D CGI. While working in Netflix for the series House of Cards and Mindhunter, Fincher discussed his wish to break free of the half-hour and hour-long formats for the animated series: "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. You want the story to be as long as it needs to be to be at maximum impact or entertainment value proposition." According to Miller, after the release of Deadpool, Fincher called him saying "OK, so we're going to use your newfound popularity to get our anthology movie made," only to eventually decide, "...let's just take it to Netflix, because they'll let us do whatever we want." On August 12, 2022, Netflix renewed the series for a fourth season.
Writing
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