Brad Bird has directed some of our all-time favorite animated films: The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007), with the latter two snagging well-deserved Oscar wins. He’s back with a new animated feature, Ray Gunn, coming to Netflix in December, described as a neo-noir science-fiction mystery. Netflix recently released the official trailer, chock-full of retro-futuristic elements, like flying cars, jet packs, laser guns, aliens, and yes, a sultry femme fatale. Color us among those now eagerly awaiting the film’s release.
Bird has been kicking around the idea for Ray Gunn for the last 30 years, working on his many other film projects while the Ray Gunn script—co-written by Matthew Robbins, who also co-wrote 1987’s Batteries Not Included with Bird—“stayed in a filing cabinet at Warner Brothers,” the director said earlier this year.
The film’s inspiration came when Bird heard the opening of the B-52s’ “Planet Claire” (a personal favorite) and initially thought it was a cover of Henry Mancini’s theme music from the classic TV show Peter Gunn. Bird is a longtime fan of film noir and hard-boiled detectives, and he came up with the idea of a futuristic detective named Ray Gunn (a pun on raygun, of course). “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,” said Bird.