Brad Bird has easily made some of my favorite movies. From being behind a handful of childhood favorites like The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille to helming arguably the best Mission: Impossible movie, Ghost Protocol. But it’s been a good decade since we’ve seen a truly original idea from the writer/director. Thankfully, his longtime animated passion project Ray Gunn is officially on the 2026 movie schedule. However, as he told us, the road to getting big and bold ideas on the screen isn’t the same as it used to be.
Thirty-something years ago, Bird wrote the script for Ray Gunn, a neo-noir detective flick set in a utopian future. It wasn’t until a few years ago that we heard it was getting off the ground with Skydance Animation. Now, the movie, which looks incredibly imaginative and straight-up cool, is coming to those with a Netflix subscription. When I spoke with Bird hours before he took to San Diego Comic Con’s Hall H stage to talk about his “Cinematic Journey” across three decades, he said there's a distinct reason why he took the movie to the streaming studio. As he shared:
I've bounced around to all these different studios [in my career]. And for me, the thing that I get frustrated with is the studios is that new films are the R&D of the future – trying new things outside of your established wheelhouses. And Netflix is one of the few places now that will allow you to have considerable resources dedicated to a new idea.
On Ray Gunn, Bird re-teamed with John Lasseter (formerly of Pixar) and David Ellison (of Ghost Protocol). However, it's not easy these days to pitch a brand new idea. Netflix, which made my favorite animated feature of last year in KPop Demon Hunters, was ready to support Bird’s Ray Gunn. He wrote it in the 1990s before it was shelved at Warner Bros. for over 25 years. Then he decided to go back to the project, take it to Skydance Animation, and then Netflix. As Bird continued during our interview:
If you try to do that at a lot of the legacy studios right now, unless your name is Chris Nolan, you don't get that chance. And it's not good for the industry because a certain amount of sequels are fine. Several of my favorite movies are sequels. I've done two. And people keep going, ‘Well, you do sequels.’ And it's like, ‘Yeah, and I like them too. I just don't think it can take up all of the bandwidth for ambitious ideas.’ It can't just be those things that you put your best resources on.
During Brad Bird’s SDCC panel, fans like me had the chance to see the first seven minutes of Ray Gunn. And it’s truly hard to believe this idea was just lying around somewhere collecting dust for so long. I watched in awe of the gorgeous, yet lived-in city of Metropia where our titular character, Ray Gunn (Sam Rockwell), is trying to solve a case with an alien colleague Eyera (Tom Waits). Here’s a look:
There’s a hard-boiled quality to it that makes me happy it's not among upcoming Disney movies – though Bird is making Incredibles 3 with Pixar right now, too. And yet, it’s not completely grim, by any means. This is especially evident in a scene where Ray Gunn immediately tries to save the alien he just raided the office of. Brad Bird reflected further on Hollywood with these words:
When we were first getting in the movie industry, people like [Steven] Spielberg were doing originals all the time. That's what they did. George Lucas, there was no space movie before Star Wars that indicated that there would be an audience for Star Wars. What? Logan's Run? No.
It’s true. Some of the best movies started with a movie studio or producer taking a risk. Finishing his thought on the matter, Bird said:
All I'm saying is that people stepped out of their comfort zone. And financial people too, you know? Not a lot of people at Fox wanted to make Star Wars, but Alan Ladd did. So Alan Ladd fought for it. And, the exciting movies that we all still talk about were usually made under trying circumstances. And people didn't believe in the idea, except for a handful of key people that kept it from dying. So, anyone that is willing to shove their chips on a new idea is okay in my book. And that's Netflix with this one. They made it happen.
And I cannot wait to see Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn on Netflix when it comes out on December 18. The filmmaker has made so many great films across his career, and it’s great to hear he found the right match with this film – even in a landscape where it’s increasingly hard to get an original idea off the page.
