Brad Bird’s Animated Sci-Fi Noir ‘Ray Gunn’ Secures December 2026 Release Date On Netflix

Netflix and Skydance Animation have announced that director Brad Bird’s upcoming animated feature Ray Gunn will officially premiere on December 18, 2026. The distribution timeline was revealed during the “Next on Netflix” showcase at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where attendees were presented with the first seven minutes of the long-gestating project alongside exclusive concept art.

The movie is set in Metropia, a sprawling metropolis designed around a retro-futuristic, 1939 perspective of an alternate future where humans and extraterrestrial beings live alongside one another. The plot centers on Raymond Gunn, a human private investigator voiced by Sam Rockwell, who takes on a complex murder case tied to a prominent multimedia star named Venus Nova, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Musician and actor Tom Waits also lends his voice to the project as Eyera, Gunn’s alien sidekick.

During an on-stage conversation at the festival with Aardman Animations co-founder Peter Lord, Bird detailed the project’s conceptual origins. The Academy Award-winning filmmaker explained that the title was inspired by a misunderstanding decades ago, when he mistook the opening bars of the B-52s song “Planet Claire” for Henry Mancini’s iconic theme to the detective series Peter Gunn. Bird clarified that while the project sat in a filing cabinet under a turnaround agreement at Warner Bros. before he re-negotiated to retrieve the intellectual property rights, he had not been actively working on it for 30 consecutive years as rumors suggested.

Bird also emphasized the value of the voice performances, revealing that despite scheduling difficulties, he was able to record Rockwell and Johansson together in the studio to build on the creative chemistry they previously established on Jojo Rabbit.

Ray Gunn is co-produced by Netflix and Skydance Animation, with John Lasseter, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Lisa Beroud serving as producers. The film’s December release positions it as a key holiday title for the streaming platform.