Ray Gunn, Brad Bird’s long-gestating animated noir, arrives in select theaters and limited 70mm engagements on December 4, 2026, and on Netflix globally on December 18. Both dates come from Netflix’s own materials: the theatrical window and 70mm plan from its Tudum trailer article, and the streaming date from its animation slate announcement.
That two-step release is still unusual for a Netflix animated film, and it is the most useful thing to know if you want to see this one on a big screen.
The release plan, in order
- December 4, 2026: select theaters, including limited 70mm engagements.
- December 18, 2026: global release on Netflix.
- Rating: PG, as listed by Netflix.
- Runtime: roughly two hours, per Netflix’s title listing.
Netflix has not published the full list of theaters or cities carrying the 70mm run. If that format is the reason you want to go, check your local listings rather than assuming a venue near you is participating, and expect the run to be short.
What the film actually is
Ray Gunn is set in Metropia, a retrofuturistic city of mile-high towers and flying cars where humans and aliens live side by side. The surface is streamlined Art Deco optimism; the story underneath is murder, corruption and a detective who is out of step with his own era.
Sam Rockwell voices Raymond Gunn, a private investigator whose legwork is increasingly done by small flying “pry bots”, with Tom Waits as his cyclopean alien partner Eye-Ra. Scarlett Johansson voices Venus Nova, the multimedia star at the centre of the case. Netflix’s logline describes a mystery involving aliens, murder and that star.
Bird has been describing this film for most of his career. In Netflix’s trailer piece he gives the original pitch in one line: “The Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers.” That blend of detective noir and science fiction is the whole idea, and the trailer leans into both.
The people behind it
Bird directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille, both Academy Award winners, and Ray Gunn is his first animated feature since. Netflix lists John Lasseter, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Lisa Beroud as producers, with Skydance Animation producing.
The theatrical window is worth reading in that context. Skydance has a history of giving animated films a cinema release before streaming, and a limited 70mm run is a statement about how the filmmakers want the film seen rather than a marketing afterthought.
What is not confirmed
A production budget of roughly $150 million has circulated in secondary coverage. Netflix’s own announcement does not state a budget, and no figure is repeated here as fact.
Early reactions from the film’s festival premiere have been mixed in some trade round-ups. Those are critics’ opinions, not a score, and we have not aggregated review numbers. If you want a recommendation before December 18, read two or three full reviews rather than an aggregate percentage.
How to decide between the two dates
If you have a cinema showing the 70mm engagement within reasonable distance, that is the version that will not exist again: a film built around wide compositions and scale, projected in a format that shows them. If not, Netflix on December 18 is the same film in the format most people will see it, and the subscription you already have covers it.
If animation release planning is your thing, our breakdown of what Disney has actually confirmed about Frozen 3 is a useful contrast in how studios announce dates before a trailer exists.
What we did not do
We have not seen Ray Gunn, and we did not attend a screening or interview anyone involved. Cast, setting, dates, rating and runtime come from Netflix’s own pages, both linked below. The budget figure and review characterisations circulating elsewhere are labelled as unconfirmed or attributed to their publishers rather than presented as our findings.
Sources
- Netflix Tudum: Ray Gunn trailer and theatrical plan
- Netflix: Animation slate for 2026 and beyond, including Ray Gunn’s December 18 date
