Brad Bird is returning to the director’s chair with his new animated feature, Ray Gunn, which will premiere on Netflix later this year.
Hopping into the booth to provide voices are Academy Award winner Sam Rockwell, Grammy winner Tom Waits, and Academy Award nominee Scarlett Johansson.
Bird, best known for The Iron Giant, and The Incredibles has been percolating on the concept for decades:
“RAY GUNN has been in my mind for over 30 years. The film is a blend of sci-fi and classic detective movies from the ’40s…it’s Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers. I’ve been a fan of both of those sort of genres, and blending them together seemed fun, and a chance to play with a lot of very cinematic elements, and extreme characters.
There’s a big chunk of people who don’t watch animation. That’s a group I’m anxious to persuade because it’s an amazing art form that is way too limited in people’s minds. Animation as a medium is too interesting to limit what kind of stories can be told.”
Of the visual art deco stylings Bird continued:
What if cities just kept getting taller and taller and more streamlined, and cars could fly, and people had jetpacks as an alternative form of getting about?”
More about Ray Gunn
In Metropia, a gigantic city in an alternate future as seen from 1939, private eye Raymond Gunn is drawn into a case involving aliens, murder and a multimedia star named Venus Nova.
Ray Gunn comes to Netflix later in 2026.
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