Some movies take a few years to make. Ray Gunn took more than 30 years — and judging by the brand-new second trailer Netflix dropped on November 12, every one of those years was worth it.
Brad Bird, the director behind The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and The Iron Giant, is back in animation with a passion project he has been carrying since the 1990s. Ray Gunn is his first animated feature made outside of Pixar since The Iron Giant in 1999, produced by Netflix and Skydance Animation — and it looks like nothing else on the release calendar.
The film is set in Metropia, a gigantic city of the future as imagined from 1939: mile-high Art Deco towers, flying cars streaking between the spires, and humans and aliens living side by side. Bird himself describes it as "The Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers," and the new trailer sells that mashup completely — hard-boiled detective energy wrapped in golden-age pulp sci-fi.
Sam Rockwell voices private eye Raymond Gunn, a tenacious detective who takes what sounds like a simple job: mob-connected fixer Arnold Dom hires him to find out whether multimedia pop star Venus Nova — voiced by Scarlett Johansson — is cheating. What starts as a cheating-spouse case spirals into murder, corruption, and a conspiracy that runs through the whole city. Gunn's partner in all of it is Eye-Ra, his one-eyed alien sidekick, voiced by the unmistakable Tom Waits.
The supporting cast is stacked too: Alan Tudyk, Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, and Michelle Rodriguez round out the ensemble, with Matthew Robbins co-writing alongside Bird and Michael Giacchino composing the score. The film runs 119 minutes and is rated PG.
Here's the part that should make every animation fan sit up: Ray Gunn is getting a real theatrical moment. It opens in select theaters on December 4, 2026, including limited 70mm screenings — an almost unheard-of rollout for an animated feature — before premiering globally on Netflix on December 18, 2026. If you can catch it on the big screen, that is the way to see it.
The early signs are strong. The film world-premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on October 10, and it currently sits at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. After three decades of waiting, Brad Bird's retro-future noir is finally here — and the future, as Netflix puts it, is waiting.
Are you catching Ray Gunn in 70mm or waiting for the Netflix drop? Let us know in the comments — and keep it locked to The Nerd's List for everything dropping this December.
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