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The next project from the legendary Brad Bird, ‘Ray Gunn’, comes exclusively to Netflix on December 18th. To celebrate the making of this new animated feature film, Moviefone attended an early press day where we stepped into the recording booth, learned to draw the main characters, and took a deep dive into the massive scale and vision behind the world of Metropia.
Release Dec 18, 2026Runtime 1h 59mBudget $150M
Moviefone also attended a press conference style conversation with Director Brad Bird and Composer Michael Giacchino. Here are five things we learned from them.
Related Article: Netflix Highlights Upcoming Animated TV & Film Slate At Annecy Event
1) Brad Bird Was Very Honest With Michael Giacchino During Their First Collaboration
When asked about continuing their working relationship, Michael Giacchino offered a story about his first collaboration with Brad Bird and how brutally honest he was.
Michael Giacchino: I had been waiting for weeks to see if I was getting that job on ‘The Incredibles’. It was my first movie. Understandably, I just really wanted to do that movie so bad, but I also felt like they were never going to hire me, because they worked with Thomas Newman and Randy Newman and these guys, and they would never do this. But for whatever reason, they did. And he got on the phone with me to tell me I got the job, and literally the first thing he says out of the gate is, now listen, your music could ruin my movie. I remember, I was on the phone thinking like, wait, what? No, no, I’m going to work really hard. No, I know you’re going to, I know, but listen to me. He said, if you and I are not on the same page every step of the way, the audience is going to start thinking things we don’t want them to think. They’re going to start feeling things we don’t want them to feel. So it’s so important that you and I are clasping hands the entire process to make sure that this story is right. We’re both telling the same story.
2) Brad Bird Says Kimbra Was The Perfect Partner For The Songs In ‘Ray Gunn’
Venus Nova is a singer in the world of ‘Ray Gunn’, so she needed to have songs written for her. Brad Bird went to New Zealand singer and songwriter Kimbra for this.
Brad Bird: A friend of mine who’s a wonderful animator, and was one of the animation supervisors on ‘Ray Gunn’, kept going, you got to, there’s this artist named Kimbra. You got to hear Kimbra. You know, you got to listen to Kimbra. You know, and I’d be like, why? Why? You just have to. And finally, I listened to an album that she did, and it was great. And when I realized that this thing was actually going to get, you know, funding, that we could go to her and have her write the Venus Nova songs. So, Michael and I very early met with her and started talking about what kind of songs we needed for the movie. And it was really interesting because I could be unbelievably specific. Like, I could say, okay, I want you to write an ear worm, something that instantly becomes like, on your mind. But I want it to be slightly annoying. And I said, but it has to be instantly, you find yourself singing it. And so she just kind of went, okay, got it, and came back and gave me this song, you know, that was, as she would call it, a banger. But it also is slightly annoying. And it’s kind of like, the hook of it is this thing that kind of pokes at you like this. And you can’t help but be singing it after, you know, you saw Innocent, that’s the song. So, then I said, you know, she needs a song that is this part of her, and then she needs a song that is that part of her. And whatever I said, she just did perfectly.
3) If ‘Ray Gunn’ Was Made When Intended, I Would Have Been The First To Do Many Sci-Fi Things On Screen
‘Ray Gunn’ was first written thirty years ago. Brad Bird reflects on all the sci-fi aspects it would have been the first to do on screen if it was made then.
Brad Bird: One of the hard things about having the idea for this long, one of the things that’s weird is that I watched other films do some element that I thought we were going to be first at. Like, okay, now someone has used jetpacks. Over the course of 30 years or whatever, each one, okay, now somebody did that. Now somebody did that. So everybody’s going to think I’m copying these other things. In fact, we were doing it first if somebody had backed it back then. But I didn’t see a reason to change it just because someone else has used it in another way. It’s just that we had all of this stuff under one roof, and we still do. It’s just that people are going to think that I’m reacting to the other films when in fact it was written in the script way long ago.
4) Michael Giacchino Says There Are Two Main Themes To The Score
When asked about the inspiration behind the score of ‘Ray Gunn’, Michael Giacchino reveals he mostly focused on two main themes.
Michael Giacchino: I think it was a little like ‘Ratatouille’ in the sense that it was whatever you can grab that’s in the room that works and fits into that whole music. And sometimes weird things work because there’s a lot of synths in this. There’s also a lot of very string based sort of ‘Maltese Falcon’ feel to what’s going on. There’s a lot of the sax and big band. But I also didn’t want it to feel like ‘The Incredibles’. I wanted it to do a different thing with that. It was a lot of options to be able to pull. And then it was just about balancing them. Keep it all under one roof. And how do you do that basically is just thematically coming up with a theme that you can then twist and bend and do all things with. And in this film, there are pretty much two main themes. There’s sort of a love theme and then there’s the main theme, a detective theme.
5) Brad Bird Didn’t Want His Characters To Look Perfect
When discussing the inspiration behind the look of the main characters in ‘Ray Gunn’, Brad Bird expressed how important it was for them to have a unique something.
Brad Bird: When we look at characters, we’re looking at a number of faces. And we’re liking different qualities on each one. The mistake that people have traditionally made in animation is when they have a lead human character, woman, or man, they tend to idealize them to the point of blandness. And they’re not interesting to look at. It’s the things that are not perfect that make them interesting to look at. Like Ray’s eyebrows are way big. And they’re kind of like Montgomery Clift in his early films. But some other aspect of him, he’s not the tallest guy. He’s not any taller than Venus Nova. He might even be an inch shorter. And that’s kind of like Lauren Bacall in Humphrey Bogart. And again, Lauren Bacall has all kinds of quirky things to her face. Bogart has even more. He’s got a weird kind of lisp. And he shouldn’t be a leading man. And yet he totally is. And so that’s why movies are this mystery. What makes them work is like, I don’t know.
What is the plot of ‘Ray Gunn’?
In Metropia, a gigantic city in an alternate future as seen from 1939, private eye Raymond Gunn is drawn into a case involving aliens, murder, and a multimedia star named Venus Nova.
Who is in the cast of ‘Ray Gunn’?
- Sam Rockwell as Ray Gunn
- Scarlett Johansson as Venus Nova / Red
- Tom Waits as Eyera
- Patton Oswalk as Hologram
