David Fincher On His First Experience Directing Animation For ‘Love Death + Robots’

Director David Fincher got his feature film start with “Alien 3” but has avoided the sci-fi genre until recently, making his triumphant return with his animated short “Bad Travelling” for his animated anthology project “Love Death + Robots,” his first entry into directing animation. The short, streaming on Netflix, mixes multiple genres with horror and features a Lovecraftian-type creature along with a mortality tale, based on a Neal Asher (a handful of his work is used on the show) story that was adapted by longtime collaborator Andrew Kevin Walker (“Seven“).

Fincher is now talking about his first attempt at animation with the New York Times, revealing how it took 18 months to complete the episode and the use of motion capture methods rather than simply handing everything off to digital artists.

“The space is entirely plastic. It was an incredibly freeing, eye-opening, mind-expanding way to interface with a story because so much of live-action storytelling is enduring or working around practical things,” Fincher said.

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“Bad Travelling,” which Fincher likens to a David Lean movie meets “Ten Little Indians,” takes place on the high seas on a distant planet, as the story follows a merchant ship as it is tormented by a giant, intelligent crab that manipulates the crew members and then eliminates them one by one. 

“My whole thing was I wanted the people to be at risk of being washed off the deck at any moment. They’re either going to get chewed apart by these blunt-nosed sharks, or they’re going to be dismembered by these pincers of these giant crustaceans,” Fincher said of what he wanted most for the short.

Wen asked about who he’d like to bring on director-wise for the fourth season, demured, admitting the time commitment can be heavy (it took him 18 months to make “Bad Travelling.” He did however admit that in the original incarnation of this project, which would have been a “Heavy Metal” revival, a lot of superstar filmmakers were courted.

“We originally started off wanting to do this with Ridley Scott, Jim Cameron, Zack Snyder, Gore Verbinski. So many friends of mine I went to and asked, ‘Would you want to do something like this?,’ and they were like, ‘Yes!’ But the reality is that the only way this show is affordable is if the people who are making it don’t mind losing the money they could be making doing something else.”

“Are we hoping that the world embraces this show on a heretofore unseen level, making it a no-brainer to increase the subsidy for it? Yeah, that would be great. Until that happens, it’s hard to get the director of ‘Avatar‘ or the director of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean‘ to drop everything they’re doing and come and play with us.”

You can watch “Bad Travelling” and other fantastic “Love Death + Robots” episodes on Netflix. We’ll be curious to see if Fincher can coax other big filmmakers to make their own shorts.