A Preview of What Brad Bird and Netflix Are About to Unleash with Their New Animated Movie ‘Ray Gunn’

From Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and The Iron Giant, comes Ray Gunn, a retrofuturistic mystery film coming soon to Netflix. The movie follows Ray Gunn (voiced by Sam Rockwell), a private detective assigned to investigate a famous pop star’s possible extramarital affairs, only to discover something deeper under the surface.

On a press day in July 2026, journalists were given an exclusive look at Ray Gunn at the Netflix building in Burbank, California. In addition to a first look at the trailer of the film, they saw the first 31 minutes of the movie, which promise a mature, funny adventure that takes inspiration from classic film noir set in a world where humans and aliens coexist.

Although Ray Gunn is finally arriving on Netflix in 2026, its inception began decades ago. Bird dusts off an idea 30 years in the making. When asked what this movie would have looked like had he gotten the chance to make it 30 years ago, Bird said it would have been done in hand-drawn animation. The teaser poster for Ray Gunn was drawn around that time, and Bird insists that had he been able to make this film then, the art style would have closely matched that poster.

During a sit-down conversation with composer and frequent collaborator Michael Giacchino, Bird mentioned that the reason Ray Gunn has gone with a more modern 3D computer-animated style is that many studio executives don’t see 2D hand-drawn animation as commercially viable. Although Bird disagrees with the notion that audiences don’t want to see 2D animation, he praised Netflix for allowing him to get this movie made at all, as other studios were unwilling to take a chance on his decades-long passion project.

The film is produced by Skydance Animation. Their head of animation, John Lasseter, like Bird, has previously worked with Pixar, having directed entries in the Toy Story and Cars franchises. This film sees a reunion between the two creatives, while also featuring a stacked cast including Rockwell as the titular Ray Gunn, Scarlett Johansson as pop star Venus Nova, and Tom Waits as Eyera, Ray’s alien colleague. Patton Oswalt, who voiced Remy in Ratatouille, reunites with Bird on this project as the voice of a hologram.

This press day saw journalists sketching the characters from the film alongside a story artist, learning about the animation team’s approach to retrofuturism and finding the perfect balance between ultramodern and period, and getting the chance to enter the voice recording booth and dub their voices over scenes from the film.

Ray Gunn is set to premiere on Netflix on December 18, 2026.