Brad Bird’s 30-Year Passion Project ‘Ray Gunn’ Finally Gets Its First Trailer

Few animated films carry the kind of mythical development history that has surrounded Brad Bird’s latest project. The director behind some of the most beloved animated films of the past three decades has spent years quietly nursing an idea that never quite made it to the screen, watching it stall and restart more than once before finally finding a home. That long wait is now officially over.

Netflix has released the first trailer for ‘Ray Gunn,’ the long-gestating animated neo-noir from the director of ‘The Incredibles’ and ‘Ratatouille.’ The film has reportedly been percolating in Bird’s imagination for more than 30 years, making its arrival one of the more anticipated animation events of the year for longtime fans of his work.

Set in Metropia, a sprawling city imagined as an alternate future seen from the perspective of 1939, the film follows private eye Raymond Gunn as he gets drawn into a case involving aliens, murder, and a multimedia star named Venus Nova. Bird has described the project’s tone as “Buck Rogers meets The Maltese Falcon,” a blend reflected in the film’s towering Art Deco cityscape paired with a hard-boiled detective mystery at its core.

Welcome to the future. From the director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille comes RAY GUNN, starring Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, and Tom Waits.

In select theaters December 4 and on Netflix December 18. pic.twitter.com/4r2rtjCC8v

— Netflix (@netflix) September 23, 2026

Sam Rockwell leads the film as Ray Gunn, a small-time private investigator working in a world where most detective work has been taken over by machines. Scarlett Johansson voices Venus Nova, the world’s most famous pop star whose scandals threaten to destroy her career, while Tom Waits plays Eyera, a one-eyed alien who serves as Ray’s closest confidant. Rounding out the ensemble are Alan Tudyk, Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Chernus, Kether Donohue, Michelle Rodriguez, Aasif Mandvi, Matt Jones, Kathryn Hunter, John Ratzenberger, Justin Peck, and Patton Oswalt, giving the film one of the more stacked voice casts in recent animated memory.

Speaking about the collaboration, Johansson called working with Bird a career milestone. “I have loved his work my entire life. This project is so uniquely special because it is a total realization of where Brad is currently on his artistic journey. I can’t wait for audiences to see this extraordinary animation that looks like nothing else out there,” she said in comments shared with Netflix’s Tudum. Bird similarly praised Rockwell’s performance, noting that his work sets “a bar to reach in terms of performance” for the film’s animators to match.

‘Ray Gunn’ marks Bird’s first animated feature made outside of Pixar since ‘The Iron Giant’ in 1999, a notable departure given his decades-long relationship with the studio, where he continues writing and producing a third ‘Incredibles’ film. Bird explained that the decision to take ‘Ray Gunn’ elsewhere was intentional, driven by a desire to reach a slightly different, more adult-skewing audience than Pixar traditionally serves. “I wanted it to go to a slightly different audience, and I wanted there to be a huge amount of overlap, obviously. The Pixar audience is wide, and I love that, and I love working with Pixar,” Bird said in an interview with IndieWire.

That distinction lines up with the film’s official rating, which the Motion Picture Association classified as PG for violence, action, language, some suggestive material, and thematic elements, a notably more mature rating range than most mainstream animated family films typically receive. The production also carries a hefty budget of more than $150 million, reflecting Skydance Animation’s ambitions for the project.

‘Ray Gunn’ will open in select theaters, including a limited number of 70mm screenings, on December 4, before arriving on Netflix on December 18. That theatrical rollout gives the film a genuine big-screen showcase before it reaches the streamer’s global audience, a strategy that mirrors the kind of prestige positioning typically reserved for awards-season contenders rather than standard streaming originals.

With Michael Giacchino composing the score and original songs from Kimbra rounding out the soundtrack, ‘Ray Gunn’ looks positioned to be one of the most distinctive animated releases of the year, both visually and musically. After three decades of false starts, Bird’s passion project is finally about to reach audiences in full.

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