Development serves as executive producer for the series. 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 of 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. 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." 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. 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 and 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 wrote more of the series' episodes than any other person, particularly episodes that are adapted from short stories. Screenwriters include co-creator Miller and
Philip Gelatt (screenwriter of the film
Europa Report), the latter of whom wrote more of the series' episodes than anyone. Many of the short films are short story adaptations, including sixteen of the eighteen in the first season Authors who have had their work adapted include
Harlan Ellison,
J. G. Ballard,
Alastair Reynolds,
Joe R. Lansdale,
Neal Asher,
Michael Swanwick, and
John Scalzi, who also adapted several of his stories into scripts himself (except some of which are adapted by Gelatt). Miller in an interview revealed that they are free to choose the story they want, but admits wanting to get the storyline of the episode right in order to give them their original flash of brilliance to a story that would not exist if it were not for the authors having ideas. The third season includes more varied screenwriters with Philip Gelatt only writing four episodes of nine. Filmmaker
Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Miller revealed that they chose to involve more screenwriters due to busying schedules of Gelatt. However, they also revealed that the writers managed to keep the episodes original to the short stories to make them more like them and ensure that they work. For the production of the second season, Miller revealed that they changed supervisors to offer a different perspective from the previous season. When Nelson was recruited she convinced the crew including Miller to introduce stories that the latter never thought that would be introduced for the show. To bring the different nature of each episode for the series, the crew worked with different creators and companies to get the different styles for each episode. Unlike the first season that contained 18 episodes, the second season is shorter than the previous one having only released eight episodes. Miller confessed that it was originally meant to get the same amount of episodes like the previous one, however Netflix asked them to shorten it in order to release it sooner in the streaming service, with the remaining episodes being released as part of the third season.
Animation While
Blur Studio is in charge of producing the series, it also was in charge of animating a few episodes for the show. As each episode has a different animation style, the visual effect supervisor for the series revealed that they contacted different studios: "We've been competing against some of these companies for years and admire them greatly. It was thrilling to bring everyone together and let them apply their unique visions to these shorts. It was here where all the creative freedom really paid off." The episodes produced by Blur Studio contain a 3D video game animation style, while also approaching the hand painted one. Tim Miller revealed that for the each different stories, the crew approached certain studios for the specific stories to ensure what episode fit better with the animation style. For the remaining thirteen episodes, several animation studios were involved - Unit Image, Red Dog Culture House, Able & Baker, Axis Studios,
Platige Image, Atomic Fiction,
Sony Pictures Imageworks,
Passion Animation Studios, Elena Volk's Independent Studio, Blow Studio, Pinkman.TV,
Studio La Cachette,
Sun Creature Studio, and
Digic Pictures. For the episode of "The Witness", the director of the episode
Alberto Mielgo used a "never-before-seen aesthetic" to capture the realistic vibe, which lead to several discussions over if it was used motion capture for the streets and building. However, Mielgo confirmed that it was all animated and that it was not easy to do as they needed to keep the characters moving from scratch by using a software that was not used before. For the following seasons, some of the returning studios besides Blur Studio were Passion Animation Studios, Pinkman.TV, Unit Image, Axis Studios, Blow Studio, and Sony Pictures Imageworks. The series also involved new studios with Atoll Studio and
Blink Industries joining the second season, while
Polygon Pictures,
Buck, and
Titmouse joined the third season. == Release ==