Brad Bird premieres “Ray Gunn” at the BFI London Film Festival this week, closing a 30-year effort to bring his animated sci-fi noir to the screen.
Bird first developed the project at Turner Entertainment in the 1990s. It stalled when Turner merged with Time Warner, and he said he eventually gave up on it. Skydance Animation revived it in 2021, and Netflix is the distributor. A link back to Warner Bros. has formed anyway, since Skydance chairman David Ellison, a producer on the film, now controls the studio through his company’s merger. Ellison shares producer credits with Bird, John Lasseter, Dana Goldberg and Lisa Beroud.
Asked at the festival whether he would build a “Gunn-verse,” Bird laughed, mimed a pistol with his finger and pointed it at his head. “This one took me 30 years,” he said, in reply.
Bird, who won Oscars for “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille,” wrote the screenplay with Matthew Robbins. The story follows the last human private detective, Raymond Gunn, voiced by Sam Rockwell, in Metropia, a vast alternate-future city imagined from the vantage of 1939. A case involving aliens, murder and a multimedia star named Venus Nova, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, pulls him in. Tom Waits also has a lead role, and Netflix added 12 more voice actors when it released the trailer. The film runs one hour and 59 minutes.
Early viewers see the usual Bird strengths. Gold Derby, which saw the first 30 minutes at Netflix, praised the smart storytelling and visual flair, with a heavier tilt toward action and comedy. Bird told the outlet the project took far longer than he imagined and that its revival still amazes him. He has said he based parts of Gunn’s character on Will Eisner’s The Spirit, a property he once pursued before leaving it behind.
The festival screens the film Oct. 10 and 17. Netflix opens it in select theaters, including 70mm engagements, on Dec. 4, and streams it Dec. 18. Observers describe it as the third feature from the Netflix-Skydance Animation deal.
