The Incredibles Director Made a Netflix Cartoon. Theaters Get It First.

Brad Bird's 'Ray Gunn' stars Sam Rockwell as a private eye in an alternate 1939 future, with Scarlett Johansson.

Brad Bird's Ray Gunn, an animated detective film set in an alternate future imagined from 1939, premieres on Netflix on December 18, 2026. Netflix released the official trailer, Ars Technica reported on September 23, 2026. A limited 70mm run in select theaters starts December 4.

That puts the big-format showing first and the stream second, a two-week head start for anyone who'd rather see a cartoon detective on film than on a television. Which theaters get the 70mm prints hasn't been announced.

Bird directed The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007), and the two Pixar titles won Oscars.

The script is old. Bird has been turning the idea over for about 30 years, and the screenplay he wrote with Matthew Robbins — his co-writer on 1987's Batteries Not Included — “stayed in a filing cabinet at Warner Brothers,” the director said earlier this year, in remarks the outlet quoted.

The origin was a misheard record. Bird heard the opening of the B-52s' “Planet Claire” and took it for a cover of Henry Mancini's theme from the television series Peter Gunn. A futuristic private eye named Ray Gunn followed, pun fully intended.

“It's film noir and a hard-boiled detective story, but it's got a lot more comedy and a lot more action than the average film noir,” Bird said.

The official premise sets Raymond Gunn, voiced by Sam Rockwell, in Metropia, a gigantic city, on a case with aliens in it, a murder, and a multimedia star, Venus Nova, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. The film is pitched a little older than Bird's Pixar work, and he's described it as The Maltese Falcon crossed with Buck Rogers.

The trailer, as Ars Technica described it, is stocked with retro-futurist hardware: flying cars, jet packs and a femme fatale.

The rest of the voice cast is deep. Tom Waits plays Eyera, Ray's one-eyed alien colleague; Matt Berry an alien mob boss, Francis “Sluggy” Xavier; Bobby Cannavale the husband who hires Ray to follow Venus; Alan Tudyk her manager, Barry Vogel; Michael Chernus a studio fixer named Sam; and Patton Oswalt a hologram. Bird voices two of the mob boss's henchmen himself. Kathryn Hunter, John Ratzenberger and Jamie Costa are cast in roles that haven't been disclosed.

The 70mm prints go out December 4. The stream follows on December 18.

Source: arstechnica.com, retrieved September 24, 2026.