This week, animation auteur debuts his latest feature, Ray Gunn, at the London Film Festival, ending what the veteran filmmaker describes as a three-decade journey to bring the animated feature to life.
“I wish I could dress it up in some more reasonable-sounding way, but it actually took that long,” Bird jokes, speaking with Deadline from his office in California.
“The mistake people make is saying that I worked on it for 30 years. I didn’t. I gave it up and thought it would go the way a lot of ideas go—put on ice and never made. But this idea stayed with me. I really wanted to see it, and the only way to see it is to make it. Fortunately, I finally found people willing to help me do that.”
Set in the retro-futurist city of Metropia, where humans and aliens live side by side, and flying cars fill the skies, Ray Gunn follows an old-school private detective named Ray Gunn (Sam Rockwell), who is drawn into a dangerous web of lies and murder after accepting a job protecting the music superstar Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson).
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“Everything came from me asking questions and coming up with answers that entertained me,” Bird says of the film’s elaborate plot.
“He’s a private detective in the future—but it’s not our future. It’s the future seen from the 1940s, the era most people associate with detective movies. Are there aliens? Yes. Do cars fly? Yes. Do people have jet packs? Yes. Buildings are so tall they have jet elevators. If there are jet elevators, people would have their necks snapped off unless they’re strapped in. What happens if they’re not strapped in? It’s just endless questions and trying to come up with the best answers.”
But the film isn’t a complete tech-fest full of unfiltered optimism about the future. Bird has concerns, particularly around the build-up of power around technological advancements, which push the film into surprising and exciting dystopian directions.
“Technology was already starting to intrude into people’s personal lives, so it wasn’t crazy to imagine it intruding even more,” Bird says, adding that the balance between message and entertainment is something he considers often.
“I’ve been accused of shoving a message or two down people’s throats, so don’t listen to what I say,” he jokes. “The bottom line is that you need to be entertaining. Nobody is forcing me to want to be entertaining. I want to be entertaining. I like movies that engage me on multiple levels. I like popcorn movies, but I also like it when I think about them later.”
Bird originally developed Ray Gunn at Turner Entertainment in the 1990s. The project was shelved after the company merged with Time Warner.
“Warner Bros. wasn’t interested in it. So I made The Iron Giant. But Warner Bros. didn’t do a particularly good job promoting it,” Bird says of the time. “The terrible thing is that if they don’t make your film, they still own it. You can’t take it somewhere else and get it made. Studios aren’t eager to see ideas they turned down become successes elsewhere, so they lock them down.”
Bird says that by the time he began working on The Incredibles, he was smart enough to use his own money to develop the project.
“I held the rights. I wanted to make sure that if anybody liked the idea, they couldn’t lock it up forever: they had to make it or give it back to me,” he says.
Some time after, Warner Bros. approached Bird about working together again. He still had eyes on Ray Gunn.
“I told them they had something of mine I still wanted to make. Management had changed, and nobody knew what the previous management had been doing,” he says.
“Eventually, I was on the road to making Ray Gunn with Warner Bros., then Warner Bros. was bought by AT&T, the pandemic happened, and a lot of other things happened. I said to them, either let’s make it or give it back to me. They gave it back, and I found somebody else interested in it.”
The project landed at Skydance Animation, which, ironically, means Ray Gunn is, in part, once again connected to Warners. The producers are John Lasseter, Bird, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Lisa Beroud. Netflix is releasing the film theatrically on December 4, and it will land on the streamer on December 18.
The film’s voice cast also features Tom Waits, Alan Tudyk, Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Chernus, Kether Donohue, Michelle Rodriguez, Aasif Mandvi, Matt Jones, Kathryn Hunter, John Ratzenberger, Justin Peck, and Patton Oswalt.
Ray Gunn is Bird’s first feature since Incredibles 2. The veteran filmmaker’s credits also include Ratatouille and two live-action features, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland. Bird has won the Best Animated Feature Oscar twice for The Incredibles and Ratatouille.
Reflecting on his start in the business, Bird describes a cautious industry that has changed profoundly over the years, particularly when it comes to animation.
“When I first got into animation, the only people doing full animation at the highest level—with occasional exceptions—were Disney. If you wanted to animate at that level, there was one place on the planet where you could work,” he says.
“That kind of animation costs money and takes resources. Early on, a movie studio head told me that no animated film would ever make more than $50 million, and only a Disney film would come close. He said it with absolute confidence, as though it were a law.”
However, Bird says, “Animation still carries a lot of baggage.”
“Some people see it as a rating: it’s G-rated, or at most PG, and you’d better aim it at five-year-olds. I love the medium, but I want to make films that I want to see. I don’t only want to see movies appropriate for five-year-olds,” he says.
Ray Gunn isn’t Pasolini’s Salò, but it isn’t exactly a children’s film. It is a smart animated feature with a lot of story and something to say. It is the exact kind of movie that in today’s market could easily spring off one or two sequels.
When asked if he plans on expanding the Gunn-verse, Bird chuckles, forms a gun with his finger, and raises it to his head.
“This one took me 30 years. I’m not up for making another one when I’m 30 years older,” he says.
“I had a blast making this film once we finally got into production. It was fun. We didn’t have much time, and the budget was tighter than you would believe for what we were trying to put on screen, but everybody rallied and brought their A-game.”
He adds: “I’m really happy with how it turned out.”
The London Film Festival ends on October 18.
