David Fincher and the genre-bending return of ‘Love, Death + Robots'

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06-05-2025

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'For my money, it's like Love, Death + Robots should be anything. Anything that you can't figure out where else it goes,' legendary filmmaker David Fincher mused about the unconventional, sci-fi/cyberpunk-flavored Netflix (mostly) animated anthology series. It's as apt a description as any for the ambitious, experimental, and genre-bending project, now launching its fourth season.
'Creativity happens on the fringe,' said Fincher — the director behind boundary-pushing cinematic classics like Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network, Gone Girl, and Zodiac. Speaking on stage at the Love, Death + Robots season premiere at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, he was joined by fellow executive producer Tim Miller (Deadpool) and supervising producer Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 2 & 3). 'It always does, and it always takes somebody — it has to be these weird flyers out there — to inform where the industry is going to go. So we're just going to be out there.'
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'Out there' also aptly describes Fincher's contribution to the new season as a director. Having launched his career as an in-demand music video director for top artists in the '80s and '90s — including Madonna, Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Sting, George Michael, Aerosmith, Nine Inch Nails, and Paula Abdul — Fincher returned to those roots to helm 'Can't Stop.' The dynamic, fully CGI-animated short features the Red Hot Chili Peppers performing their 2002 hit at a Scottish castle—as marionettes on strings.
'We hadn't done a music video before,' Miller told Gold Derby on the red carpet before the panel, noting that he recruited his longtime collaborator 'because he's David Fincher and he invented music videos.'
'He said he wasn't going to do one this season, and I just thought, 'Dude, you've got to!'' Miller added, describing how he lightly twisted Fincher's arm to take on the challenge. 'Because it's a set length of time and he can't make it any longer, so it'll contain him inside the box. And he said, 'OK, then I'm going to do the Red Hot Chili Peppers as puppets!' Which, oddly enough, was something that he had said he wanted to do for a long time, so I wasn't surprised when I heard it. He had talked about us doing it for a music video version earlier. Directors get these ideas kicking around their head and they just stay there.'
Guillermo del Toro and David Fincher at Netflix's Love, Death + Robots: Volume 4 premiere (Photo:) - Credit:Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea told Gold Derby that Fincher 'just reached out — and we're friends — and he was very generous with him to offer to do it. And obviously he can do whatever the f--k he wants, so for him to want to work with us, it's just a super-cool, connected thing to do. … We just did it!'
On stage during the post-screening panel, moderated by filmmaker and fellow animation enthusiast Guillermo del Toro (who pledged to direct an episode if a hoped-for fifth season materializes), Fincher revealed one of the key pleasures of working with motion capture — especially with such intrinsically recognizable performers as vocalist Anthony Kiedis, guitarist John Frusciante, drummer Chad Smith, and Flea.
Flea attends Love, Death + Robot premiere (Photo:) - Credit:'I love that when you look at a motion capture session and you see just the dots as sort of fused as a little [character] — I love the fact that you can go 'That's Flea!'' Fincher said. 'And so I thought that would be very funny — to find a band that you can really identify physically by the way that they move around the stage and mocap them, and then try to work out the whole dangling problem.'
'If anybody's been on a motion capture stage, it's not a pretty place,' Miller added. 'You really have people in ugly leotards and in fluorescent lighting.' Given Fincher's well-known taste for beautifully composed, striking imagery, 'David couldn't look at the monitors of these people being filmed. He just couldn't! It was so aesthetically unappealing that he couldn't bring himself to look at it, and all he could look at was the computer monitor with little dots representing people.'
Taking big creative swings is at the core of what Love, Death + Robots is all about, Fincher explained on the panel. He remains amazed by the range of stories and concepts Miller — an avid fan of science fiction writing and the full spectrum of animation techniques — curates each season, with Yuh Nelson overseeing conceptual approaches that range from traditional to avant-garde.
That level of ambition is made possible by Netflix's unflinching support for the series — regardless of how bizarre, obtuse, or head-scratching the concepts might sound at first.
'We have a benefactor who is absolutely a thousand percent behind taking these kinds of risks,' Fincher said. 'We're not convincing anyone. We're just barely getting finished before it has to be shown here. So to have the support that we have — I don't know. If we were making this somewhere else, for someone else, it wouldn't happen.'
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