Brad Bird’s ‘Ray Gunn’ Gets a Trailer and 70mm Release

Brad Bird’s long-developing animated mystery Ray Gunn finally has its first full trailer and a two-stage release plan. Netflix will put the film into a limited run of 70mm screenings on December 4 before making it available on the streaming service on December 18.

A detective story in a retro future

The movie places a hard-boiled private eye inside Metropia, a futuristic city imagined through a 1939 lens and populated by both humans and aliens. Sam Rockwell voices Raymond “Ray” Gunn, a detective pulled into a murder case involving Venus Nova, a pop star voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Tom Waits plays Gunn’s alien colleague Eyera.

The trailer presents the project as a mix of science fiction, noir and Hollywood scandal rather than a conventional family adventure. That combination also explains why the theatrical component matters: a 70mm engagement gives Bird’s stylized world a premium-format showcase before the film reaches Netflix viewers globally.

Three decades in the making

Ray Gunn has followed an unusually long road to the screen. Bird developed the original idea after seeing promotional material for the 1989 television movie Peter Gunn. A version was planned at Turner Feature Animation in the 1990s, but the project was shelved as Bird moved on to direct The Iron Giant.

Bird later built a career that included The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Incredibles 2 and the live-action blockbuster Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol. He signed on with Skydance Animation to revive Ray Gunn in 2021, turning the film into what he has described publicly as a decades-long passion project.

The voice ensemble extends well beyond its three leads. Netflix also announced Alan Tudyk, Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Rodriguez, Aasif Mandvi, Kathryn Hunter, John Ratzenberger and Patton Oswalt among the cast. Bird is producing alongside John Lasseter, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Lisa Beroud.

With a confirmed trailer, theatrical date and streaming date, Ray Gunn has moved from animation-industry curiosity to one of Netflix’s most distinctive year-end releases.