Ray Gunn still pounds the asphalt

First, a quick word on sources. Everything here comes from six reports published on 23 September. Netflix's own fan site, Tudum, ran a piece by Stephan Lee. Variety's story was by Mya Copeland. Cartoon Brew, which covers animation, had one from Jamie Lang. The Futon Critic reposted Netflix's press release. MovieWeb's Richard Nebens walked through the trailer beat by beat, and ComingSoon's Namrata Ghosh did too. When only one of them reports something, I'll say so.

There's one small snag, and it's worth clearing up now. The outlets don't agree on how to spell the alien partner's name. Tudum writes Eye-Ra. Variety, Cartoon Brew, MovieWeb and ComingSoon all write Eyera. I'm going with Eyera, because most of them do. It's the same character either way.

Welcome to Metropia

Netflix's official pitch comes from the press release The Futon Critic reposted. Here it is in full: "In Metropia, a gigantic city in an alternate future as seen from 1939, private eye Raymond Gunn (Sam Rockwell) is drawn into a case involving aliens, murder and a multimedia star named Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson)."

That one sentence packs in a lot. Look at the phrase "an alternate future as seen from 1939." This isn't our world with shinier phones. It's tomorrow as people imagined it back in 1939. Picture towers a mile high. Picture flying cars. Picture humans and aliens sharing the same footpaths. And underneath all that chrome, there's a crime story waiting.

Tudum's Stephan Lee paints the same city. He calls Metropia "a dazzling retrofuturistic city where humans and aliens live side by side, flying cars speed through the skies, and buildings stretch a mile high." Retrofuturistic just means the future the way the past imagined it. But Lee says to look past the "streamlined Art Deco–inspired sheen." Underneath it, you'll find murder and corruption. You'll also find one "flameout" of a detective, trying to make sense of a world that keeps changing around him.

Cartoon Brew's Jamie Lang gets it down to a single line. Metropia, Lang writes, is "a sprawling city imagined as the future might have looked in 1939."

Bird has his own shorthand for the whole thing. He told Tudum: "The elevator pitch I came up with is The Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers." If those names don't ring a bell, The Maltese Falcon is classic detective noir. Buck Rogers is old-school pulp science fiction. At the Annecy animation festival, Cartoon Brew reports, Bird flipped the order and called it "Buck Rogers meets The Maltese Falcon." Same two ingredients, same mix.

Either way, this is a hard-boiled detective story crossed with a space-age adventure. It's not a kids' buddy comedy wearing a fedora.

Who's on the case

Let's meet the detective. Raymond Gunn is Sam Rockwell's role, and Tudum says he already seems like he's from a bygone era, even in the future. That's the neat twist at the heart of this film. In Metropia, most of a private eye's real legwork has been handed over to tiny "pry bots." Ray and his cyclopean (that is, one-eyed) alien partner are among the last investigators still pounding the asphalt the old-fashioned way.

That phrase is Tudum's, and it's where our headline comes from. It's the whole character in one image. The future's gone automatic, and Ray's still out there wearing down his shoes.

His partner is Eyera, voiced by Tom Waits. Cartoon Brew describes him as "a one-eyed alien and Ray's closest confidant." So he's not just comic relief. He's the one Ray trusts most.

Then there's Venus Nova, played by Scarlett Johansson. Tudum calls her "one of Metropia's biggest and most controversial megastars." It adds that "wherever Venus goes, scandal follows." Variety goes darker. It calls her "a pop star facing a scandal that could end her career — or her." Netflix's own pitch simply calls her "a multimedia star."

In the trailer, as MovieWeb describes it, a client calls Venus "emotional" and "volatile." Then we hear her shout, "I didn't do it!" Those lines come straight from the trailer, going by Nebens's account.

Bird also spoke to Tudum about the city's two faces. "You're being hopeful with the city," he said, "but you're still showing there's a dark underbelly — things that happen in the shadows."

What the trailer actually shows

MovieWeb's Richard Nebens gave the most detailed rundown of the trailer. It's worth flagging that it's his account. Shot-by-shot write-ups are where reporters sometimes read too much into a few seconds of footage.

Here's what Nebens describes. The trailer opens with Ray at a crime scene, working as a private investigator. Eyera asks him what he's looking for. Ray answers, "the truth."

Next, a man turns up at Ray's office to talk about Venus Nova. He calls her emotional and volatile. We hear Venus insisting she didn't do anything. Then an associate asks Ray to keep her out of trouble, while she yells at reporters on television.

Later shots hint that Ray and Venus are growing closer. After that, things speed up. There's a flying-car chase that Nebens compares to the airborne traffic in Star Wars: Episode II. There are more chases, gunfights and plenty of action.

Nebens is careful to add that "story details are still largely under wraps." I'll stay inside that line too. The trailer doesn't tell us who the killer is, or why anyone did anything. It teases a spark between Ray and Venus, but it doesn't show where that goes. So I won't guess.

ComingSoon's Namrata Ghosh describes the same opening a little differently. She starts with the city itself. There's a skyline on the scale of Metropolis, plus aliens, flying cars, colossal skyscrapers and jetpacks. Then comes the arrival at the murder scene, and then the Venus Nova case.

So why does it feel grown-up? Tudum points to the film's roots. Ray Gunn calls back to Humphrey Bogart's detective movies and to the noir film Out of the Past. It also nods to the worlds of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, two of fiction's most famous private eyes.

Bird's answer is simpler. As he told Tudum: "Animation is too fun a medium, and too interesting, to limit what kind of stories can be told."

Thirty years in Bird's head

This isn't a film Bird dreamed up to fill a slot on Netflix's calendar. It's older than a lot of the people who'll watch it.

Variety's Mya Copeland traces it right back to the start. Bird first had the idea after seeing a trailer for Peter Gunn, a film that was coming out in 1989. In the 1990s, Turner Feature Animation was meant to make it.

Then it stalled. The project was shelved when Bird went off to direct The Iron Giant for Warner Bros., which came out in 1999.

It sat on the shelf for a long time. Then, in 2021, Bird signed a deal with Skydance Animation to direct Ray Gunn at last. That move put him back together with John Lasseter. Bird had worked under Lasseter at Pixar, where he wrote and directed The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Incredibles 2.

The Skydance deal brought back some other old colleagues too. David Ellison and Dana Goldberg were at Skydance Media when Bird directed the live-action Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Now they're working with him again.

Cartoon Brew adds an important detail. Ray Gunn has been in Bird's imagination for more than three decades. But as he explained at Annecy, it spent much of that time dormant. In other words, he wasn't working on it the whole time. He was just holding onto it.

At Annecy in June, festival crowds got to see the film's opening seven minutes. Wednesday's trailer is the first longer look that anyone can watch.

Bird also gave something up to make this happen. Variety reports that he stepped away from Pixar's upcoming Incredibles 3, due in 2028, so he could focus on Ray Gunn. Peter Sohn, who directed The Good Dinosaur and Elemental, took over.

There's one more craft note, and it comes secondhand. ComingSoon quotes Bird from an interview with The Wrap. In it, Bird says he was inspired by Michael Curtiz, the director of Casablanca. He praises Curtiz for "this muscular feeling of moving the camera, and the dynamism of that, and things blocked in a way that are visually draw you in." Bird also named David Lean, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock among his other inspirations. That quote is ComingSoon's, citing The Wrap. I haven't seen The Wrap's original interview.

The voice cast

The three leads are the same in every report. Sam Rockwell is Raymond Gunn. Scarlett Johansson is Venus Nova. Tom Waits is Eyera.

Beyond that, the lists get longer. Variety also names Patton Oswalt, Kathryn Hunter, John Ratzenberger and Jamie Costa.

Cartoon Brew reports a bigger cast announcement from Netflix. It adds Alan Tudyk, Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Chernus, Kether Donohue, Michelle Rodriguez, Aasif Mandvi, Matt Jones, Kathryn Hunter, John Ratzenberger, Justin Peck and Patton Oswalt. Cartoon Brew points out that the announcement mostly doesn't say who they're playing.

MovieWeb is the only one that gives Matt Berry a named role. On its info card, he's Francis "Slugsy" Xavier. Until Netflix confirms it, treat that as MovieWeb's word.

The producer credits don't match up either. Variety lists five producers. They're Bird, Lasseter, Ellison, Goldberg and Lisa Beroud. MovieWeb's list is longer. It names Alex Schwartz, Brad Bird, Connie Nartonis Thompson, Dana Goldberg, David Ellison, Hannah Minghella, John Lasseter, Karen Rupert Toliver and Lisa Beroud. The two lists clash, so I'll go with Variety's shorter one and note that MovieWeb's goes further. I won't guess at who did what.

Who's building Metropia

Cartoon Brew has the cleanest list of the people behind the camera. Bird wrote the screenplay with Matthew Robbins, based on Bird's own original story. MovieWeb lists the same two writers.

Michael Giacchino wrote the score. Paul Felix is the production designer, which means he shapes the overall look of the world. Wendell Luebbe handled art direction. Neysa Bove designed the costumes. Cartoon Brew also spells her name Bové, with an accent, elsewhere in the same story.

Giacchino's name should jump out at Bird fans. He scored The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Incredibles 2, among other films. So this is a long partnership continuing. That doesn't tell us what the Ray Gunn music sounds like, though. A trailer's too short to judge a score, and there's no soundtrack album to hear yet.

Cartoon Brew also has news from Canada. Bird's heading to the Ottawa International Animation Festival. There, on Saturday, Cartoon Brew will host a Q&A about the film. Bird will be joined by Cinesite visual effects supervisor Adel Abada, Cinesite head of character animation Jason Ryan and Skydance Animation costume designer Neysa Bové.

The dates, in order

June 2026: festival crowds at Annecy see the opening seven minutes, according to Cartoon Brew.

23 September 2026: Netflix posts the first official trailer on its YouTube channel, under the title "Ray Gunn | Official Trailer | Netflix."

That same week: Bird's Q&A at the Ottawa festival, as Cartoon Brew reports.

10 October 2026: MovieWeb says the film will have its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. None of the other five reports mentions that date. So for now, it's MovieWeb's claim alone. Treat it as likely but unconfirmed until the festival or Netflix says so.

4 December 2026: the film opens in select theaters, including a limited number of 70mm screenings. Tudum, Cartoon Brew, The Futon Critic, ComingSoon and MovieWeb all report this. Variety's story only mentions the Netflix date. That's a gap in one report, not a contradiction, so the theater date stands.

18 December 2026: Ray Gunn arrives on Netflix. All six reports agree on this one.

MovieWeb's info card also lists a running time of 119 minutes. I couldn't find that number in Tudum or in Netflix's press release. So again, that's MovieWeb's figure for now.

It's also been a while since Bird last directed. MovieWeb notes his last feature was Incredibles 2 in 2018. That makes it eight years between films, if you count that way. Ghost Protocol came out in 2011, and The Iron Giant in 1999. But the main point is simpler. Ray Gunn isn't a quick cartoon Netflix ordered last year. It's a passion project that's finally out of the vault.

Why Bird says animation can do this

Bird's own words make his case better than any summary could. Three of his quotes to Tudum do most of the work.

First, there's the full pitch: "The elevator pitch I came up with is The Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers. I like both of those genres, and blending them together seemed fun, and a chance to play with a lot of very cinematic elements and extreme characters."

Second, there's his view of the art form: "Animation is too fun a medium, and too interesting, to limit what kind of stories can be told."

And third, there's the city: "You're being hopeful with the city, but you're still showing there's a dark underbelly — things that happen in the shadows."

Put those together and you get his argument. Bird isn't apologising for making a cartoon about murder and scandal. He's saying cartoons were always big enough for that. Metropia's hope and its dark side are meant to share the same frame. You get the shiny chrome of Buck Rogers and the rot of The Maltese Falcon, side by side.

Does the finished film pull that off? We won't know until December. What we've got now is a trailer, and it's the first real chance for most of us to judge the look.

Skydance, Netflix and the 70mm question

Variety and Cartoon Brew both name Skydance Animation as the studio making the film. Netflix is handling the release.

But Netflix isn't just dropping it online. It's giving the film a short run in select theaters first, including some screenings in 70mm. Then it moves to streaming two weeks later. That two-step release has become a familiar pattern for big animated films.

The 70mm detail is the interesting bit. It's a large, old-fashioned film format that most films don't bother with any more. Choosing it tells you someone involved still cares about how this looks on a big screen. They want to show it off, not just stream it. Cartoon Brew made the most of that point, and Tudum confirms the select theaters and limited 70mm on 4 December.

Step back and look at the whole road. It's more than thirty years, with long quiet patches. It wasn't one long production. Cartoon Brew's word "dormant" really matters here. It'd be wrong to say Bird's been making Ray Gunn since 1989. He's been carrying it since then. The making part only started with Skydance.

Where to watch the trailer

The trailer to watch is Netflix's official upload on YouTube. It's titled Ray Gunn | Official Trailer | Netflix, and it's on the Netflix channel. You'll find it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL-xjzQFWsY.

Stick with that one, rather than re-uploads or fan edits.

Netflix also has a page for the film at https://www.netflix.com/title/81756797, which is where it'll stream from 18 December.

Sources

Netflix Tudum — Stephan Lee, 23 Sep 2026 — Ray Gunn Trailer. The description of Metropia, Bird's Maltese Falcon and Buck Rogers pitch, the pry bots, the Eye-Ra spelling, Venus Nova, Bird's quotes on the city and on animation, and the 4 December theater date and 18 December Netflix date.

Variety — Mya Copeland, 23 Sep 2026 6:17am PT. The film's neo-noir sci-fi mystery framing, the three leads and Eyera spelling, Oswalt, Hunter, Ratzenberger and Costa, the Peter Gunn origin, the Turner and Iron Giant history, the 2021 Skydance deal and reunions, the five producers, Bird leaving Incredibles 3 to Sohn, and the Netflix date.

Cartoon Brew — Jamie Lang, 23 Sep 2026. Skydance, the 4 December theaters and limited 70mm, the Netflix date, the Ottawa Q&A, Bird's Annecy pitch, the expanded voice cast, the crew list, the more than thirty years Bird carried the idea, and the opening seven minutes at Annecy.

The Futon Critic — Netflix press release, 23 Sep 2026 06:01 AM. The official one-line pitch, the theater and Netflix dates, and the Netflix title page.

MovieWeb — Richard Nebens, 23 Sep 2026. The beat-by-beat trailer rundown, the eight-year gap since Incredibles 2, the BFI London date of 10 October 2026, the 119-minute running time, the writers, the longer producer list, and Matt Berry as Francis "Slugsy" Xavier.

ComingSoon — Namrata Ghosh, 23 Sep 2026. Another description of the trailer's opening, the release dates, and Bird's Curtiz quote as cited from The Wrap.

Netflix — Ray Gunn | Official Trailer. The trailer itself.

What we still don't know

We don't know who the killer is, or even exactly who's been killed. We don't know whether Venus did it. We don't know where things go between Ray and Venus. The trailer only teases that.

We don't have a final spelling for Ray's partner. Tudum says Eye-Ra, and everyone else says Eyera. A Netflix character list should settle it.

We can't confirm the London festival date of 10 October or the 119-minute running time. Both come from MovieWeb alone, so far.

We haven't heard Bird's Curtiz quote firsthand. It reaches us through ComingSoon, citing The Wrap.

And the pictures on this page aren't from the film. They're generated artwork of a skyline, an office, a film reel and some window blinds. None of them shows Rockwell, Johansson, Waits or any character from Ray Gunn.

The short version, step by step

One. On Wednesday 23 September 2026, Netflix released the first official Ray Gunn trailer.

Two. The setting is Metropia, a gigantic city in an alternate future as seen from 1939. Humans and aliens live there together, and its Art Deco shine hides murder and corruption.

Three. The case pulls in private eye Raymond Gunn, voiced by Sam Rockwell, and multimedia star Venus Nova, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Ray's partner is Eyera, voiced by Tom Waits. Pry bots do most of the city's detective work, but these two still pound the asphalt.

Four. Bird's pitch is The Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers, as he told Tudum. At Annecy, he put it the other way round.

Five. The idea came from a Peter Gunn trailer in 1989. It was shelved for The Iron Giant, then revived by Skydance Animation in 2021.

Six. The dates run from Annecy in June to Ottawa this week. MovieWeb says London follows on 10 October. Then it's select theaters and limited 70mm on 4 December, and Netflix on 18 December. MovieWeb lists the running time as 119 minutes.

Seven. You can watch the official trailer on Netflix's YouTube channel now.

Why the asphalt line is the real story

Trailer days make a lot of noise. Everyone's talking about the "first look." But the most interesting thing here is older than any upload.

For decades, Bird's been carrying around a detective who refuses to be replaced by a machine in his own city. That's why Tudum's pry-bots detail is so good. It's a science-fiction joke that makes the noir land. The future automated the legwork, and the human, plus one alien with one eye, kept walking anyway.

That's why The Maltese Falcon and Buck Rogers belong in the same sentence. One brings the moral gloom. The other brings the skyline and the flying cars.

The other big story is the road this film took. Turner couldn't finish it. The Iron Giant pulled Bird away. Skydance and Lasseter brought it back to life. Now Netflix is dipping a toe into cinemas, with 70mm screenings, before the film streams on 18 December.

Annecy's already seen seven minutes. Ottawa gets the behind-the-scenes Q&A. And if MovieWeb's right, London gets a festival premiere in October. None of that's hype. It's just the path a film took to get from one man's head to a public trailer, and it took more than thirty years.

As for the characters, here's how they're shaping up. Johansson's Venus Nova is all scandal and star power, not a sidekick. Rockwell's Ray is a man slightly out of step with the future he lives in. Waits's Eyera is the loyal, one-eyed friend who still walks the case beside him. And Giacchino, Felix, Luebbe and Bove are the names Cartoon Brew puts on the build.

Small traps: spelling, credits and dates

The spelling of Eyera is the first. If you search for the character, you'll find both versions. Tudum, Netflix's own site, uses Eye-Ra. The trade and animation press, including Variety and Cartoon Brew, uses Eyera. MovieWeb and ComingSoon follow Eyera too. Until Netflix publishes a final character list, you'll see both.

The producer lists are the second trap. Variety's five names are the short version. MovieWeb's longer list adds Schwartz, Nartonis Thompson, Minghella, Rupert Toliver and more. Cartoon Brew follows a similar rule with the supporting cast. It prints the names but doesn't guess at the roles. The one exception is MovieWeb's claim that Matt Berry plays Francis "Slugsy" Xavier.

The third trap is the release date. Variety only mentions 18 December, but five reports carry the 4 December theater run too. There are two dates to remember, not one.

The bottom line

Wednesday's trailer puts Brad Bird's long-delayed animated neo-noir on the clock at last. Metropia is the future as 1939 imagined it. Rockwell's Raymond Gunn is still pounding the asphalt beside Waits's Eyera. And Johansson's Venus Nova drags scandal into the case.

It's Maltese Falcon gloom with Buck Rogers chrome, made by Skydance Animation. It's in select theaters, some in 70mm, from 4 December 2026. It's on Netflix from 18 December. And the trailer's out now.

Bird's waited more than thirty years for this. Now we've got less than three months until we find out whether it was worth the wait.