One of the more surprising moments in volume four of Love, Death, and Robots is an appearance from YouTube star MrBeast. He shows up in the episode “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur,” playing a sort of twisted game master presiding over a death race on one of the moons of Jupiter. Also, there are dinosaurs. According to LDR creator Tim Miller, who also directed the episode, the collaboration started out simply because MrBeast was a fan of the show. It then solidified once Miller realized he had the ideal role.
“I have this evil game master here, and I thought he would be perfect for that,” Miller says. “I watched his Amazon show and I thought ‘what a dick’ often. With some of the contestants, he seemed to take a particular joy in their uncomfortableness. Not because he’s an evil guy — he’s not, he’s a super nice guy. I think he just enjoys the whole machination of people and how they can either work together or against each other. And it seemed to fit this particular role very well.”
Miller says that because MrBeast was such a fan, he didn’t actually charge anything for his performance. “The cool thing is he likes the show so much — we couldn’t afford MrBeast prices or anything like it, but he said he’d do it for free,” Miller says.
The inclusion of a massive YouTube star was partly a calculated decision. Miller says one of the goals with this season of the anthology series was to expand the audience, which currently is very focused on fans of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy animation. “He has a huge audience, and is beloved by hundreds of millions of people, so I’m hoping even a small percentage of them will come to see him in the show,” Miller says.
That thinking is also part of the reason why the show returned to live action with the episode “Golgotha,” which stars Rhys Darby. Miller said that the show saw interest beyond its core with the season 1 episode “Ice Age,” in which Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Topher Grace discover a miniature civilization in their freezer. “Live action does broaden the audience a little bit,” Miller says.
That said, this strategy hasn’t really impacted the core of what LDR is. Volume four of the series still has the mix of action, violence, scares, and humor the anthology has become known for, many of which are based on short stories that Miller has been gathering for years. “Golgotha” is based on a story by Dave Hutchinson, for example, while “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur” was adapted from a story by Stant Litore.
“I have a big bag of shorts, 100 or so, and it’s added to constantly,” Miller says. “And every season we kind of mix and match what we think will make an interesting lineup.” One of the new episodes is a bloody battle between soldiers and a demonic creature summoned by the Nazis in WWII, while another is simply a confessional where smart appliances reveal just how gross humans are. And then there’s something like “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur,” which ticks several boxes. “It’s got a little bit of love story, a little bit of tragedy to it,” says Miller. “But the main thing, the reason to show up, is because you have dinosaurs fighting each other in space.”
The goal with each new season, he adds, is to find that right balance. The idea is to have a healthy mix between light and dark, fantasy and science fiction, and all of the other elements that go into a new collection of Love, Death, and Robots. Essentially, he doesn’t want the show to repeat itself too much — though sometimes that happens by accident.
“We seem to have a preponderance of cats in our episodes,” Miller says. “It’s not on purpose; it’s not because I like cats. I don’t like cats. It just seems to happen.”
