The Incredibles director’s new film sat in ‘the deep freeze’ for three decades. Brad Bird has explained who put it there
At long last, Brad Bird’s making his first big-screen return since 2018’s Incredibles 2, with a new movie landing later this year.
Right, here’s one for animation fans and anyone who’s had a dream stuck in development hell: Brad Bird, the chap behind Pixar’s The Incredibles and Ratatouille (and let’s not forget The Iron Giant), is finally rolling out his long-awaited original project, Ray Gunn. It’s taken the better part of three decades to get this one out of the freezer and into our cinemas — and, fitting the times, onto Netflix as well.
Brad Bird’s Old Obsession
Here’s the story: Ray Gunn is set in some alt-futuristic universe, and Bird’s had this one rattling around his mind since the early '90s — actually, since before he even did The Iron Giant. It’s not your typical modern ‘just add streaming’ tale, either. Bird first pitched the idea back in the day to a production company who then, as these things so often go, got bought up by a bigger fish. The new owners shelved the project, as is tradition, and suddenly Ray Gunn was gathering frost instead of momentum. Bird moved on to other animation landmarks, but the idea stayed in deep storage, contractually frozen until he could finally wrangle it loose years later.
Bird himself, speaking at an early press event at Netflix's animation facility, was keen to clear the air on how long he’d actually been chewing over Ray Gunn:
I wasn’t developing it that long, though. This is getting rewritten, and I want to correct the impression that I was just sitting, stroking my chin for two years. No, I pitched it, we developed it to a point, the company that I was with got bought out by another company, and they didn’t want to make it. That’s how I got onto 'The Iron Giant.' It went into the deep freeze for a long time, and then the opportunity came where I could get it extracted. Part of the problem is, you pitch an idea when you’re first starting out, your coin of the realm is you get paid for pitching the idea. If they like the idea, and I had no trouble selling ideas, they own it for a pretty cheap price because you’re a beginning filmmaker, and then if they don’t make it, you can’t take it anywhere else because they own it.
He went on to point out how studios hang onto these unloved properties, not wanting anyone else to score a hit with what they’ve technically got buried somewhere in the archives. Bird even brought up Braveheart as an example (although, minor correction Brad, Mel Gibson, not Brooks, but yes, studios famously pass on hits all the time), and admitted a fair bit of relief finally seeing Ray Gunn thawed out for good.
Read more: Denis Villeneuve swore off other people's universes after Blade Runner 2049. Then he took James Bond.
Building a New Animated World
Jump forward a couple of decades, and in steps Adel Abada, VFX Supervisor, who jumped on board the project in 2024, just as it was starting to pick up genuine speed. At that point, there was already a script, storyboards, and a rough animatic ready to go — and more importantly, a story with enough ambition to stand out in a pretty crowded animation field. Abada was especially struck by how the film weaves in proper film noir grit and mature themes. It’s rare you hear an animation veteran sounding genuinely excited about a project splitting the difference between a murder mystery and animated visuals that could have just as easily worked in live action.
So, I started to get involved roughly two years ago, and production started about 20 months ago. So, when it first came, there was a script and there was a storyboard with an animatic on it, an animatic of storyboards, and that’s the thing I was watching, and it really spoke to me, because I’m looking at it and I’m like, 'This feels very refreshing, and I haven’t seen a lot of that, and this is like expanding the medium of animation and what it can do.' So we’re really getting into the field where, 'Oh, I’ve got a story to tell, and that story could be made in live action, right? But I’m going to use the animation medium to tell it, and I think this is really not common.' And I was really excited because, to me, I was like, 'Oh yeah, film noir, mature themes, and I want to be on this.' So I'm glad we got it and started working on it, by November 2024.
Cast, Release Dates, and What’s Actually Going On
Bird’s new world will be brought to life by a cracking cast. Sam Rockwell will be voicing the main man, Raymond Gunn himself, with Scarlett Johansson in tow as Venus Nova. The lineup gets even more eclectic with Tom Waits as Eyera, plus Bobby Cannavale, Alan Tudyk, Matt Berry, John Ratzenberger, and Patton Oswalt filling out the supporting lot. If you’re wondering about the story itself: it follows a low-level human P.I. who ends up investigating a particularly messy murder with a gigantic pop star right in the centre of it all. That means you can expect the usual Bird blend — action, comedy, drama, the works.
- Ray Gunn lands in select cinemas across the UK and US from 4 December 2026.
- It’ll drop globally on Netflix two weeks later, 18 December 2026.
Ray Gunn is set for a limited cinema release on 4 December 2026, before streaming on Netflix from 18 December.