Netflix releases new trailer for Ray Gunn

We caught the first trailer for the upcoming Netflix animated film Ray Gunn in September and were charmed by director Brad Bird’s blend of a Jetsons-like future with classic 1930s noir detective thrillers. Bird has described it as a mashup of The Maltese Falcon and Buck Rogers, and the latest trailer definitely gives off that energy.

As previously reported, Bird has directed some of our all-time favorite animated films: The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007), with the latter two snagging well-deserved Oscar wins. He’s been kicking around the idea for Ray Gunn for the last 30 years, working on his many other film projects while the Ray Gunn script—co-written by Matthew Robbins, who also co-wrote 1987’s Batteries Not Included with Bird—“stayed in a filing cabinet at Warner Brothers,” the director said earlier this year.

The film’s inspiration came when Bird heard the opening of the B-52s’ “Planet Claire” (a personal favorite that also provides the soundtrack to the new trailer) and initially thought it was a cover of Henry Mancini’s theme music from the classic TV show Peter Gunn. Bird is a longtime fan of film noir and hard-boiled detectives, and he came up with the idea of a futuristic detective named Ray Gunn (a pun on “raygun,” of course). “It’s film noir and a hard-boiled detective story, but it’s got a lot more comedy and a lot more action than the average film noir,” said Bird.

Source: arstechnica.com