Quick TakeArticle at a glance
- Netflix dropped the second, more revealing trailer for Brad Bird's Ray Gunn on November 12, 2026, confirming the film's central case and several new cast names ahead of its December 4 theatrical and December 18 streaming release.
- The trailer reveals the actual job that pulls Ray Gunn into trouble: mob-connected fixer Arnold Dom hires him to find out whether pop star Venus Nova is cheating, a job that spirals into murder and corruption.
- It's Brad Bird's first feature since Incredibles 2, which grossed $1.24 billion worldwide in 2018, and the one he's wanted to make since before The Iron Giant — the project spent roughly 30 years bouncing between studios before Netflix and Skydance Animation finally greenlit it.
A new Ray Gunn trailer arrived on Netflix’s YouTube channel on November 12, 2026 — the second and, so far, most detailed look at Brad Bird’s animated sci-fi noir. It confirms the film still opens in select 70mm theaters December 4 before streaming on Netflix December 18, and for the first time lays out the actual case that drags private eye Ray Gunn into Metropia’s underworld.
Trailer via Netflix on YouTube.
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Theatrical release | December 4, 2026 (select theaters, limited 70mm) |
| Streaming release | December 18, 2026 (Netflix) |
| Studio | Netflix / Skydance Animation |
| Director | Brad Bird |
| Rating | PG |
| Runtime | 119 minutes |
| Starring | Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Waits, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Rodriguez, Matt Berry, Alan Tudyk |
| Setting | Metropia, a retrofuturistic city imagined through a 1939 pulp lens |
The Case: Why Ray Gunn Gets Hired
The trailer’s biggest new reveal is the actual job: Bobby Cannavale’s Arnold Dom, a well-connected fixer, hires Ray to find out whether Venus Nova — Scarlett Johansson’s scandal-prone multimedia superstar — is cheating. The trailer’s news-crew shots make clear Venus can’t do anything without a camera on her.
What starts as a simple tail job doesn’t stay simple. By the back half of the trailer, Ray is counting stacks of cash and getting pulled toward a murder that, on its face, has nothing to do with anyone’s infidelity.
Ray and Eyera, Partners in Metropia
The trailer spends real time on Ray’s working relationship with Eyera, voiced by Tom Waits — a one-eyed alien colleague who rides shotgun through Metropia’s streets and clearly isn’t new to this. Bird has described Metropia as a city where humans and aliens live side by side without anyone making a thing of it, and the trailer backs that up: nobody in the shot reacts to Eyera at all. The two trade the kind of clipped, familiar back-and-forth of partners who’ve already had this argument before.
Money, Corruption and the City’s Underworld
Where the first trailer stayed mostly in Ray’s office and the city’s skyline, this one goes underground. A close shot of a stack of cash being counted out, a tense sit-down with what Bird has called a massive, spongelike mob boss, and glimpses of a card game all point to the same thing: the Venus Nova job connects to money changing hands somewhere it shouldn’t. None of it is explained yet — the trailer shows the transaction, not the reason for it.
Metropia Itself Gets More Screen Time
The new trailer leans harder into showing off Metropia than the first one did — wide shots of the skyline at night, flying cars threading between towers, and street-level crowds that make the 1939-pulp-futurism pitch land visually, not just in interviews. It’s the clearest sense yet of why Netflix and Skydance signed off on a 70mm theatrical run for an animated film: these are shots built for a big screen.
What’s New Compared to the First Trailer
Ray Gunn’s first trailer, released back on September 23, introduced the setting, the core cast and the 30-year production story, but kept the actual plot vague — Venus Nova was just “scandal-plagued.” This trailer names the job (Dom hiring Ray to check on Venus), adds Michelle Rodriguez’s Roz Dexler and Alan Tudyk’s Barry Vogel to the confirmed cast, and shows Venus performing on stage and driving through the city herself rather than only being talked about. It’s a meaningfully more detailed trailer, not just a remix of the first one’s footage.
What the Trailer Doesn’t Show
For all the new plot detail, the trailer still withholds the two things that would actually spoil the mystery: who ends up dead, and how the cheating investigation connects to the money and corruption Ray stumbles into. A quick cut to a well-dressed man sharing a meal with a woman and a child goes unexplained — the trailer doesn’t say whose family it is or why it matters.
Several outlets have also spotted a hidden Pixar A113 reference tucked into the footage, a classic Brad Bird callback to his CalArts days — we couldn’t pin down the exact shot ourselves on a rewatch, so that one’s worth hunting for yourself.
A 30-Year Wait to Get Made
Brad Bird first developed Ray Gunn at Turner Feature Animation back in 1995, years before he directed The Iron Giant in 1999, and the project died when the Turner-Time Warner merger folded that studio soon after. It took until 2021 — roughly 26 years later — for Bird to sign with Skydance Animation and finally get it moving again, with Netflix eventually coming aboard to finish and distribute it.
Bird has been careful to draw a line between having the idea and actually getting to make it, telling press he’d have shot it decades ago if a studio had been willing to pay for it — the holdup was never the script. Deadline covered the full history around the film’s London Film Festival stop. The idea itself traces back to Bird mishearing the opening of the B-52’s “Planet Claire” as a new version of Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme — the mash-up of detective music and something otherworldly is where the title, and the premise, came from.
The Dom-hires-Ray-to-tail-Venus setup and the newly confirmed cast names were first reported by Variety alongside the trailer’s release; Netflix’s own Tudum writeup has additional detail on Johansson’s dual role voicing and singing as Venus Nova.
For more on this desk’s trailer coverage, see our breakdowns of The Exorcist: Martyrs — another recent Scarlett Johansson genre role — and The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, another Netflix title we’ve covered trailer-to-trailer this year.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does Ray Gunn come out?
Ray Gunn opens in select theaters, including limited 70mm screenings, on December 4, 2026, then streams exclusively on Netflix starting December 18, 2026.
Who is in the Ray Gunn voice cast?
Sam Rockwell voices private eye Raymond “Ray” Gunn, Scarlett Johansson voices pop star Venus Nova, and Tom Waits voices Ray’s alien partner Eyera. Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Rodriguez, Matt Berry and Alan Tudyk round out the confirmed cast.
What is Ray Gunn about?
Ray Gunn is an animated sci-fi noir set in Metropia, a retrofuturistic city seen through a 1939 pulp lens where humans and aliens live side by side. Private eye Ray Gunn is hired to find out if superstar Venus Nova is cheating, and the job pulls him into a murder and corruption case instead.
Is Ray Gunn based on a comic or book?
No. Ray Gunn is an original story director Brad Bird first conceived in the mid-1990s, not an adaptation of any existing comic, book or franchise.
Why did Ray Gunn take so long to make?
Bird first developed it at Turner Feature Animation in the 1990s, but the project was scrapped after the Turner-Time Warner merger. It took until 2021, when Bird signed with Skydance Animation, for the film to finally move forward, with Netflix later coming on to finish and distribute it.
