Brad Bird brings 'Ray Gunn' to London Film Festival after three-decade effort

Centre · 1Animation director Brad Bird is debuting his feature Ray Gunn at the BFI London Film Festival, which Deadline describes as ending what he calls a three-decade journey to make the film. 1 Left · 1The Hollywood Reporter says the animated caper has its world premiere on the Saturday after Bird's Thursday Screen Talk at a Curzon cinema in Soho, during the festival's 70th edition. 2 Centre · 1Bird told Deadline that he did not work on the film for 30 years: he gave it up, expecting it to be shelved like many ideas, but the idea stayed with him until he found people willing to help make it. 1

Centre · 1The film is set in the retro-futurist city of Metropia, where humans and aliens live side by side. Sam Rockwell voices private detective Ray Gunn, who is drawn into a web of lies and murder while protecting the music star Venus Nova, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. 1 Centre · 1Bird said he developed the project at Turner Entertainment in the 1990s and it was shelved after the company merged with Time Warner. He said Warner Bros. kept the rights, so he made The Iron Giant instead, and that by the time of The Incredibles he used his own money to hold the rights to Ray Gunn. 1 Centre · 1A later attempt with Warner Bros. was derailed by the AT&T takeover and the pandemic; Warner Bros. gave the project back and it landed at Skydance Animation. Producers are John Lasseter, Bird, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Lisa Beroud. Netflix releases it theatrically on 4 December and on its streaming service on 18 December. 1

Centre · 1The voice cast also includes Tom Waits, Alan Tudyk, Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Rodriguez and Patton Oswalt. It is Bird's first feature since Incredibles 2. 1 Centre · 1Bird said the film imagines the future as seen from the 1940s and has dystopian turns reflecting his concern about concentrated power in technology. He said the budget was tighter than people would believe and that he does not plan a sequel. 1 Left · 1At the festival talk with Anna Higgs of Character 7, Bird said he was happiest that the film is on screen, joking that finishing it took heroic dedication "or insanity". 2

Left · 1At the talk Bird said he began drawing sequential stories at age three, and called The Jungle Book possibly his "spider bite moment". 2 Left · 1He said Disney became political after he arrived and that he "essentially got fired for sticking up for the stuff the old guys taught me to value", after pushing for more mature storytelling. 2 Left · 1He also described Steven Spielberg and Jim Brooks as "800-pound gorilla" figures, said Steve Jobs wanted him closer to Disney after he moved to live-action, and said Pete Sohn is directing The Incredibles 3, which Bird is writing and producing with others. 2

Centre · 1On animation more broadly, Bird told Deadline it still carries baggage, with some seeing it as a rating aimed at five-year-olds, and said he wants to make films he wants to see. The festival runs until 18 October. 1