Netflix just released the first trailer for Ray Gunn, the upcoming animated movie from Academy Award-winning director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant, Ratatouille). Set in a retro-futuristic megalopolis called Metropia, Ray Gunn follows private eye Raymond Gunn, voiced by Sam Rockwell, as he wrestles with a murder mystery involving multimedia star Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson).

Produced by Skydance Animation, Ray Gunn marks Bird’s return to directing after Incredibles 2, a smash-hit that became the highest-grossing Pixar movie worldwide, before being surpassed by Inside Out 2. The trailer for Ray Gunn, however, shows that Bird is out to tell a different kind of story this time, one that’s a callback to hard-boiled detective stories and to sci-fi mystery and future noir: “Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers,” as Bird described the movie in a press release. “It wasn’t a Pixar movie, and that wasn’t a judgment against Pixar,” Bird said in an interview with Polygon. “I wanted it to have its own flavor that was a little different and I wanted it to have an edge that I thought people might not be as enthusiastic for over there.”

Ray Gunn is a sci-fi detective story in a retro-futuristic setting

The trailer shows that Ray Gunn will have all the beats of a classic sci-fi detective story, including action, tough one-liners, a mystery to solve, and a turbulent love story. While the movie marks Bird’s return after eight years, he’s actually been working on the idea since 1996, when he wrote the first script.

The additional cast revealed for Ray Gunn includes Alan Tudyk, Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Chernus, Kether Donohue, Michelle Rodriguez, Aasif Mandvi, Matt Jones, Kathryn Hunter, John Ratzenberger, Justin Peck, and Patton Oswalt.

In the few months since the movie was presented at the Annecy Film Festival, Bird was finally able to convince Netflix to give it a theatrical release. Ray Gunn will debut in select theaters and limited 70mm on Dec. 4, before hitting Netflix on Dec. 18, the same day as Avengers: Doomsday is released. It will be tough for Ray Gunn to compete for attention in that holiday season, but being available on streaming will surely help Bird’s new movie contend with Marvel’s new blockbuster and with Dune: Part 3, also coming out on Dec. 18.

Image: Netflix