The minute-long trailer of Love Death + Robots features shots from 18 animated stories (called “NSFW” (Not safe for work) by Netflix in the video’s description) edited to harsh industrial rock music. Netflix notes that the anthology series includes, among others, “sentient dairy products, werewolf soldiers, robots gone wild, garbage monsters, cyborg bounty hunters, alien spiders and blood-thirsty demons from hell”. The series, made by animators and filmmakers from around the world, will be premiered on March 15.
According to a Netflix press release, as published in The Verge, the series will cover topics such as “racism, government, war, free will, and human nature”. Various animation styles, from traditional 2D to photo-realistic 3D, will be employed across genres, including science fiction, horror, comedy and fantasy. Love Death + Robots is being presented by Tim Miller and David Fincher whose “formative interests in storytelling” were inspired by “the eclectic and provocative comic book material from the 1970s”.
Deadpool director Miller is also a visual effects artists and designed title sequences for films, including Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011). Fincher and Miller had been trying to develop an animated adaptation of stories from the science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, Heavy Metal for adults. Filmmakers such as Guillermo Del Toro, Zack Snyder and Gore Verbinski were reportedly attached to the planned anthology, including James Cameron as an executive producer at one point. The project is in limbo.
Miller and Fincher later tried to crowdfund an animated adaptation of the comic book series, Eric Powell’s The Goon, which was also violent mixed-genre fare. Fincher and Miller’s Blur Studio released a proof-of-concept trailer in 2013.