Incredibles Director Brad Bird's Netflix Sci-Fi Movie Looks Like Everything We've Always Wanted

Over the last 30-plus years, it's possible that no one has done more to challenge the mainstream's perception of animated entertainment than Brad Bird. As the writer/director of the "Incredibles" movies, "Ratatouille," and "The Iron Giant," Bird has always written his films with adults in mind. He wants everyone who engages with his work to walk away feeling elated while also mulling intriguing ideas and themes that aren't always present in four-quadrant animated movies. Thus far, his instincts have been unerring. (Yes, "The Iron Giant" was a box office failure, but that's only because Warner Bros. fumbled its theatrical release).

Despite this sterling track record, Bird has long struggled to get his wildly ambitious dream project, "Ray Gunn," greenlit by a major studio. He hatched the idea with writer/director Matthew Robbins ("Dragonslayer," "*batteries not included") back in the early 1990s, but he encountered resistance from Warner Bros. Feature Animation, which felt the project was too adult. He pitched the film again in the early 2000s to Pixar, but it far preferred his other idea, "The Incredibles," instead.

Bird finally got Pixar co-founder John Lasseter to greenlight "Ray Gunn" at Skydance Animation four years ago. Pitched as "'The Maltese Falcon' meets Buck Rogers," the film is a hybrid neo-noir/sci-fi/action movie wherein the title character, a jaded private eye voiced by Sam Rockwell, tries to clear a femme fatale multimedia star named Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson) for the murder of her body double. It's a world of tall buildings, flying cars, jetpacks, and aliens. (Gunn's partner is a one-eyed extraterrestrial named Eyera, voiced by the legendary Tom Waits.)

"Ray Gunn" will stream on Netflix at some point in 2026, and the company just gave us our first look at this highly anticipated film!

Design-wise, Brad Bird appears to have gone with a sun-soaked, lightly washed-out color palette that calls to mind such Los Angeles set neo-noirs as Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" and Curtis Hanson's "L.A. Confidential." There's also, judging from the above image, a hint of "Blade Runner" in there. It's got a sheen to it that feels almost too polished for the genre, but I won't pass any kind of judgment until I see these images in motion.

For those worried that "Ray Gunn" might not hook kids, Bird assured moviegoers all the way back in 1999, "Really, it's more of an action movie, and it had a substantial amount of comedy in it." He also called it "very mainstream." It's also quite relevant, what with Gunn being the last human private detective on the planet (seeing as we're all worried about being replaced by a machine or AI these days).

I'm excited on Bird's behalf (and my own, as I've been looking forward to this movie since I first heard about it in the 1990s), but I'm down on the involvement of John Lasseter, who was driven from Pixar due to multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. I'm also opposed to the overall idea of Paramount Skydance boss David Ellison, a monopolist who's on the verge of gobbling up Warner Bros. Discovery and is friends with genocide-threatening (for now) President Donald Trump. Basically, Ellison's whole push to absorb WBD is morally repugnant, to the point where I can't in good conscience support anything made by Paramount Skydance going forward.

I hate to throw this on Bird (who struck his deal before Ellison out-bid Netflix for WBD), but these are the times we unfortunately live in. It's a true bummer.