Pixar's Academy Award-winning director Brad Bird — of "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" fame — has been out of the spotlight for a while, working on a project that's been percolating inside his noggin for three decades. That project is "Ray Gunn", and it's finally on the horizon.
The first dynamic trailer for "Ray Gunn" arrived in September, giving us a glimpse of this cool sci-fi crime thriller. Like his previous works, it's an animated movie energized with spectacular visuals and starring the vocal talents of Sam Rockwell, Alan Tudyk, Scarlett Johansson, and Tom Waits.
If you're into retro-futuristic elements like flying cars, jet packs, blazing laser pistols, scary robots, alien hoodlums, and a classic whodunnit storyline, then this will be right up your alley.
Produced by Skydance Animation and directed by Brad Bird, "Ray Gunn" has a long history of development dating back even before Bird's glory days at Pixar. From this sneak peek, it's clear that a lot of love and attention to detail have been poured into this highly anticipated project, which arrives exclusively on Netflix on Dec. 18, 2026.
But what exactly is "Ray Gunn", and why did it take so long to get made?
What is Ray Gunn about?
The adult-oriented plot revolves around a hard-boiled private eye in Metropia named Raymond "Ray" Gunn (Rockwell), his one-eyed alien partner Eyera (Waits) and Venus Nova (Johansson), a sassy pop music starlet who's embroiled in a scandal that might cancel her career and possibly end her life.
"Ray Gunn's" murder mystery screenplay was co-written by Bird and Matthew Robbins, who he penned the script for 1987’s "Batteries Not Included" with.
"The elevator pitch that I boiled it down to is 'Buck Rogers' meets 'The Maltese Falcon,'" Bird told Discussing Film regarding the movie’s influences. "You take the slightly more naïve, optimistic design view of the future, and then you add a dark underbelly to it.
"Usually in these stories, the city is kind of a grimy place. In 'Blade Runner,' it's acid rain and this future you don’t want to be in. But I thought there was something fun about juxtaposing a positive vision of the city of the future, and then showing that still there's going to be corruption and lies."
Ray Gunn has a star-studded line-up of vocal talents too, including Sam Rockwell, Alan Tudyk, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Waits, Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, Michale Chernus and Patton Oswalt.
Ray Gunn's long journey to our screens
What’s so cool about this neo-noir passion project is that it reunites Bird with former Pixar Chief John Lasseter ("Toy Story"), with whom the duo delivered some of the storied animation studio's biggest hits. Lasseter left Pixar in 2018 to head up the animation division at Skydance the next year.
The idea for "Ray Gunn" has been bouncing around Hollywood since the late '80s when Bird was with Amblin Entertainment. Its plot was inspired by Blake Edwards' "Peter Gunn" movie, Will Eisner's The Spirit and The B-52’s tune "Planet Claire," but set in an alt-future with humans and aliens.
After a successful run working on the first eight seasons of "The Simpsons," "Ray Gunn" was set up at Turner Feature Animation in the mid-90s but was eventually shelved before Turner merged with Warner Bros., where Bird directed 1999's "The Iron Giant."
Even while working on other live-action endeavors like helming 2011's "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" and 2015’s "Tomorrowland," or spending time on Pixar's "Incredibles 3," Bird held onto hope that "Ray Gunn" might be revived after years of development hell.
Fortunately, he moved on from "Incredibles 3" in 2021 to join Lasseter at Skydance Animation, and the rest is history after setting the movie up at Netflix instead of his old home at Pixar.
Watching this new trailer, it’s hard not to compare its design aesthetics and overall plot devices to movies like "Blade Runner," "The Fifth Element," and maybe a touch of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
"Ray Gunn" debuts on Netflix on Dec. 18, 2026, and will also have a limited 70mm theatrical release starting Dec. 4, 2026.
