How ‘Love, Death and Robots’ Creator Tim Miller Got David Fincher to Direct a Wild Red Hot Chili Peppers Music Video

“Love, Death & Robots” has returned.

The critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning animated anthology, created by “Deadpool” director Tim Miller, is back for the first time since 2022. And this year’s crop of stories, which includes “Spider Rose” (a follow-up to the last cycle’s “Swarm”), a bonkers live-action installment from Miller (“Golgotha”) and a World War II-set monster mash (“How Zeke Got Religion”). There is also an entry where sentient appliances fight back against their human oppressors (“Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners”).

Miller is known for selecting the stories for adaptation himself.

“I read a lot and for years, so I have a big library of things that I think are interesting and would make good shorts that I’ve pulled and set aside,” Miller explained. “And every season, you’re trying to curate something that has a little bit for everybody. It can’t just be my taste. Because if it was, it would be boring.” Miller said that he is “not a fan of horror, because it scares me.” “I don’t know why people like to be scared,” he added.

But there are some very scary installments in this season’s batch.

“I can recognize that some people like it. So it should be in the show,” Miller said. He said that the approach is to “curate and try and get something for everybody and then there’s a lot of discussion.” He and executive producer Jennifer Yuh Nelson (she also directed “Spider Rose”) are “constantly moving the pieces around the board but everybody chimes in.” He said that “even the lawyers at Netflix” will tell him “I really love that story” and suggest something for inclusion. “Everybody’s invested in their own lineup for the show,” Miller explained.

And the pile of stories he’s earmarked for potential adaptation with “Love, Death & Robots?” It’s not getting any smaller. “I keep reading new things that are great for the show,” Miller said.

What makes the fourth collection somewhat unique is that several of the stories are either direct continuations of earlier stories or aesthetic successors, like “Close Encounters of the Mini Kind,” which takes its cues from Volume 3’s “Night of the Mini Dead,” with the same tilt-shifted, sped-up style.

“There have been spiritual sequels,” Nelson said. But when it came to “Spider Rose,” a follow-up to Miller’s 2022 entry “Swarm,” she said that American science fiction author Bruce Sterling’s “world is so vast, there’s no way he could have done any sort of justice to it in just one short, although we could try.” She was drawn to the fact that “Spider Rose” explores the other side of a conflict introduced in “Swarm.” “It was a beautiful, emotional little view into a part of that world,” Nelson said. “The story itself was just so nihilistic and gnarly and awful, it was always on the board probably since the very beginning.”

Finally, with Volume 4, they got their chance – a story that Nelson said, at its core, is “an emotional story of this woman dealing with grief.” But, you know, with robots and creatures and all the rest.

Perhaps the most surprising installment in Volume 4 is “Can’t Stop,” directed by David Fincher, another executive producer. This is only the second entry that he had directed, after Volume 3’s “Bad Travelling.” And it could be not more different – whereas that was an epic period piece about a group of fisherman who are hunted by an otherworldly crab, “Don’t Stop” is basically a Red Hot Chili Peppers music video, based on their performance in 2003 at Slane Castle.

While Miller said other directors would act like a kid in the toy store as they picked out their story and the animation studio they chose to work with, Fincher is “the kid that doesn’t go in the toy store. He would just say, ‘I know what I want. Just have it delivered to my house.’”

Originally, Fincher was not going to direct an installment in this cycle. But Miller “needed some star power,” and pleaded with him to direct a short. When Fincher asked Miller what he thought that he should do, Miller said, “A music video.” Fincher was intrigued.

Miller said the reason for his suggestion was for two reasons. “One, because he’s the master of that particular format. Two, because we’d never done it. Third, it’s a controlled time.” Fincher’s last short was the longest “Love, Death & Robots” installment by far – a whopping 20 minutes. “It was not supposed to be 20 minutes. It was supposed to be 15, but that motherf–ker can’t contain himself – and I certainly can’t contain him,” Miller said. The music video format/song length would be “a great way to put the box around it.”

Fincher had the pitch almost from the beginning, telling Miller, “I want to do the Red Hot Chili Peppers as puppets.” Miller said, I got a smile on my face because I knew it would be great.” What made the short so special, he said, was that it has “just the right amount of gags.” And sometimes, when Fincher is playing it straight, that’s where the biggest laughs come from. “I almost think the serious shots are better, more funny, because the ludicrousness of doing it with puppets,” Miller said. Agreed.

“Love, Death & Robots” is streaming on Netflix now.

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