While Passing on ‘Incredibles 3’, Pixar Vet Brad Bird Revives ‘Ray Gunn’

Brad Bird, the director behind Pixar’s The Incredibles and Warner Bros.’ The Iron Giant, is finally moving forward on a project that has been in development for decades. His long-sought animated science fiction detective film Ray Gunn has officially entered production after years of delay. Bird first began working on the concept in the early 1990s, but the project stalled and was set aside for other films. Now Skydance Animation, which has been producing original titles for Netflix, is helping lift it off the ground.

Collider reported that actor John Ratzenberger confirmed his involvement with Ray Gunn while speaking at a panel for A Bug’s Life at the FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention. Ratzenberger is widely regarded as Pixar’s longtime good-luck charm, having provided voices in nearly every major Pixar release from Toy Story through Coco, Onward, and Inside Out 2. He stated that he had begun recording dialogue for Bird’s new project, though his role has not yet been disclosed. No other confirmed members of the cast have been made public. Composer Michael Giacchino, a frequent collaborator of Bird and the award-winning musician behind The Incredibles and its sequel, is said to be scoring the film.

Plot information remains limited. What is known is that Ray Gunn will focus on a private investigator who is described as the last human detective working in a futuristic city populated by alien species. Early development art when the project was still in preparation as a hand-drawn feature under Turner Animation suggests a mix of retro-futurism with detective noir. Whether Bird has maintained those ideas for the new version is unclear, but the combination signals a distinctive direction for his first non-Pixar animated feature in years.

Bird’s return to Ray Gunn comes as he also balances responsibilities to Pixar. A third installment of The Incredibles was announced at Disney’s D23 Expo, confirming the franchise’s future continuation. Bird, who directed the first two movies, stepped down from the director’s chair, passing the position to filmmaker Peter Sohn. Sohn previously directed Elemental and The Good Dinosaur for Pixar and has collaborated with Bird in the past. Even though he is not directing, Bird remains a central creative force, since he is writing the screenplay for the upcoming movie just as he did with the earlier entries.

The Incredibles continues to stand as one of Pixar’s most reliable successes. The original 2004 release earned $632 million globally and captured the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Its 2018 sequel, Incredibles 2, surpassed expectations with a record opening weekend and ended with $1.2 billion at the worldwide box office. The track record adds weight to the production of the third film, at the same time Bird’s attention is pulled toward finally realizing Ray Gunn. With one project reviving a 30-year-old idea and the other extending one of Disney’s most profitable franchises, Bird’s work will shape two corners of modern animation in the coming years.

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