After years of waiting, Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn is finally starting to look like a real movie audiences will actually get to see. Netflix has released the first trailer for the animated sci-fi noir, giving us a much better look at the strange world Bird has been working toward for decades. The film mixes old-school 1940s detective stories with retro-futuristic science fiction, and the easiest way to describe the whole thing might still be Bird’s own pitch: The Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers.
Bird, who directed The Incredibles, The Iron Giant and Ratatouille, has apparently been carrying the idea for Ray Gunn for more than 30 years. So there’s a lot of history behind this one. And from the trailer, it certainly doesn’t look like a typical modern animated movie.
Welcome to Metropia
The trailer introduces Metropia, a huge city that looks like it was pulled out of someone’s idea of the future from 1939. Art Deco skyscrapers stretch across the skyline, flying cars move through the streets, and humans and aliens seem to have settled into the same crowded world. It has that wonderfully strange quality of looking futuristic and old-fashioned at the exact same time.
At the center of all this is Raymond “Ray” Gunn, voiced by Sam Rockwell. Ray is a private investigator who appears to be the kind of guy who would rather take a questionable case than turn down a paycheck. Unfortunately for him, one particular job gets much bigger than expected when he’s dragged into a mystery involving murder, aliens and Venus Nova, a glamorous multimedia pop star voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
Venus has a major scandal threatening both her career and her life, which is apparently where Ray comes in. From there, the trailer suggests that the detective story is going to get increasingly weird, with Ray caught somewhere between a classic private-eye mystery and a full-blown science-fiction adventure.
Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson and a Very Fun Voice Cast
Rockwell and Johansson lead the voice cast, but they’re far from the only recognizable names attached to the movie. Tom Waits voices Eyera, Ray’s alien colleague, which is one of those casting choices that sounds so odd on paper that it somehow makes perfect sense for this movie. The cast also includes Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, Alan Tudyk and Kathryn Hunter. With that many distinctive voices involved, Ray Gunn already has plenty of personality before you even get to the animation.
The music comes from Michael Giacchino, another familiar name for Bird fans. Giacchino has worked with Bird several times before, including on The Incredibles and Ratatouille, so his involvement here feels like a natural fit for a project this stylized. If the trailer is any indication, the score should have plenty to do with creating that old-fashioned noir atmosphere.
When Is Ray Gunn Coming to Netflix?
Ray Gunn will have its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival before getting a limited theatrical release on December 4, 2026. Some theaters will even show the movie in 70mm, which feels particularly appropriate for a film that is going this hard on its retro visual identity. After that theatrical run, Ray Gunn will arrive globally on Netflix on December 18, 2026.
It has taken a very long time for Brad Bird to finally bring this particular idea to the screen, but the trailer makes it pretty clear why he kept coming back to it. Ray Gunn looks like a strange mix of detective noir, classic animation and old-school science fiction, all dropped into one very busy world. Whether the movie can live up to the unusually long wait is another question, but at least now we finally have a proper look at what Bird has been building.