Overview
- At San Diego Comic‑Con’s Hall H on July 24, Brad Bird screened a seven to eight minute cold open from Ray Gunn to show the film’s tone and staging.
- The panel confirmed core casting with Sam Rockwell as private eye Ray, Tom Waits as the alien sidekick Eye‑ra, and Scarlett Johansson as multimedia star Venus Nova, and featured a surprise appearance by composer Michael Giacchino.
- The opened footage sets the story in a vast retro‑futuristic city called Metropia and follows a methodical break‑in and an extended fight with a hulking alien named Vanzine that establishes the film’s noir mood.
- Coverage identifies the project as a Skydance Animation and Netflix feature and reports a Netflix release date of December 18, 2026, while some outlets left open whether the film will have a theatrical run before streaming.
- Bird framed Ray Gunn as a cross between The Maltese Falcon and Buck Rogers and emphasized an ’it’s all film, man’ approach to staging, signaling he intends the project as a cinematic, adult‑oriented animated film and shaping expectations for how it will be marketed.