Everything We Learned About Netflix’s Retro-Futuristic Noir at Annecy

At Netflix’s big animation showcase, attendees were treated to an absolute masterclass. To celebrate the upcoming Skydance Animation film, now confirmed to launch on December 18, 2026, Aardman Animations co-founder Sir Peter Lord sat down with Bird for a wide-ranging conversation, culminating in a massive in-depth look at Bird’s highly anticipated 3D animated feature: Ray Gunn.

Described as a retro-futuristic, neo-noir mystery, Ray Gun has been a passion project of Byrd’s for decades. Here’s a full, quote-filled account of everything the two animation veterans discussed, giving us the most in-depth look yet at the film’s origins, aesthetics, cast, and Bird’s fierce dedication to pure animation.

Speaking of which, Bird recalled early opposition from within the industry regarding animation as a medium for certain stories, particularly such Ray Gunn: “When I first started in the business, there were older animators… who used to say, you know, ‘If you can do it in live action… don’t do it in animation.’ And I thought, if that’s true then animation will become extinct. Because live action was getting to the point where it could do anything. But that was never the reason for doing animation.”

For Bird, the true power of the medium is “caricature” in its ability to boil down a character’s form and movements to their absolute essence. He also praised animation’s ability to change emotional tones “on a dime” much quicker and more effectively than live-action.

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B-52 and a 30-year journey out of the safe

Ray Gunn It’s been floating around in the Hollywood sky for a long time, but where did the idea come from? Bird revealed that the spark came from a surprisingly silly place: a misheard pop song.

“Basically, I heard a song, and I thought it was another song. That’s how it started,” Bird explained. “It was ‘Planet Claire’ by the B-52’s… I thought it was the theme to ‘Peter Gunn’, Henry Mancini’s famous theme. And then it went like this… [imitates song]. And it looked like a 50s monster movie or something. And so I went, no, no, it’s not Peter Gunn, what is it? This is a ray gun. And then I went, this is great, that’s the guy’s name.

While Bird joked about rumors that he has been working continuously on the film for 30 years, he clarified that it actually languished in a Warner Bros. filing cabinet for a long time before Turnaround negotiated to acquire the rights. “It was well preserved, and when you brought it out, it was heated right through. It was still very tasty… I remained excited about the idea.”

If they had made the film at that time, it would have been made by hand. But today, Bird said, “The thing I love about computer animation is that you can move the camera and treat it like a dimensional space. And the real lens. You can mimic the properties of the real lens.”

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“Buck Rogers meets the Maltese Falcon”

If you’re expecting a sleek, modern cyberpunk future, think again. Bird designed the world as people in the past imagined the future would be.

“People don’t call weapons of the future ray guns anymore. That’s an outdated term,” Bird said. “So it automatically made me think if you’re going to do a spy movie in the future, wouldn’t it be cool if it looked like what we associate with classic spy movies? So it’s from the ’30s and ’40s. This movie takes place in the future as seen from 1939. So it’s Buck Rogers meets The Maltese Falcon.”

The film takes place in a massive urban city with miles of tall buildings. Bird took heavy inspiration from classic futurist designers like Hugh Ferriss and Raymond Loewy, leaning into the optimistic Art Deco and streamline era that was effectively killed by World War II.

But beneath that bright, optimistic vision of the city, lies a classic noir underbelly. “There’s something about having an optimistic view of the city and still showing that you still have desperate characters and slimeballs and corruption still happening,” Bird said, teasing that the film will feature actual aliens as well as plenty of dirty talk.

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A star-studded cast (and a soccer coach)

Voice acting is the lifeblood of animation, and Bird has assembled a powerhouse trio to lead his mystery:

• Sam Rockwell Plays the titular detective Ray Gunn.
• Scarlett Johansson Venus plays a main character named Nova.
• tom waits lends his famous, gravelly voice to an alien named Ira.

Bird emphasized how important great voice actors are to the entire animation process: “What takes an actor 10 seconds to say may take an animator a month to animate. And so… that animator will hear that line hundreds of times. And if there’s nothing in the line, you can’t go that deep on it. But really good voice actors give you something that excites you.”

In a hilarious revelation, Bird shared that the voice of a sarcastic arms dealer featured in an exclusive clip wasn’t an A-lister at all, but rather it was the voice of his son’s football coach, a man named Buck. “My son said, ‘Do you know who would have a great voice? Buck.’… He’s not an actor, but he did a great job,” Bird laughed.

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Pure animation, zero mo-cap

Due to his deep respect for the art, Bird was incredibly proud to announce that Ray Gun relies entirely on pure keyframe animation. No motion capture is used in the film at all.

Bird said proudly, “I think the thing I’m really unusually happy with is that we took on some hard-to-do animation, but it’s still animation.” “Some people will say, well, you know, that scene is subtle, so you might have done mo-cap or something like that. And I will proudly say, no, it was animation and animators acted out the scenes… It doesn’t feel like live action. It feels like live action, but it doesn’t look like that. It’s a little bit like a dance… The medium of animation is amazing.”

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Themes, gadgets and a release window

While Bird remained incredibly tight-lipped about the film’s central mystery so as not to spoil the reveal, he did note that the thematic core of the film deals with identity. “It’s about people who are hiding aspects of themselves… We all have many characters, and certain people or situations bring out different characters.”

To amuse the audience, Bird showed a hilarious, dialogue-heavy clip where a desperate Ray Gunn (whose own gun has broken down) visits the aforementioned underground dealer (voiced by Buck) to buy a new weapon. The dealer shows off several deadly gadgets, including the “Electron Fryboy” (200,000 volts of pure aggression) and the “Atom Master G-Coil” (which fires a violent laser grid). Ray eventually comes across the “L8-13 Fire Blaster”, a fragile prototype powered by alien technology, and attempts to cheat the dealer out of a mere $40.

To close the panel, Bird entertained attendees with the first seven minutes of the film and finally answered the question on everyone’s mind: When is it coming out?

Bird has officially confirmed that Ray Gun will be coming to Netflix at the end of the year, and in fact, we now know it will be on December 18th.

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we should have more Ray Gunn Coming in the next few days – stay tuned!