Brad Bird’s long-awaited animated film Ray Gunn has revealed its expanded voice cast as the project moves closer to a December release after more than three decades in development.
Netflix released the film’s first full trailer on September 23, 2026, offering a substantial look at the retro-futuristic city of Metropia and the voices inhabiting it. Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson lead the cast as private detective Raymond Gunn and celebrity Venus Nova, with Tom Waits joining them as Gunn’s one-eyed alien partner, Eyera.
The latest cast announcement significantly expands that trio. Matt Berry, Alan Tudyk, Patton Oswalt, John Ratzenberger, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Rodriguez and several other performers have joined the ensemble, while Bird himself voices multiple characters. It gives the director an unusually varied collection of voices for a project he has been trying to bring to the screen since before The Iron Giant.
Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson Lead Metropia’s Cast
Rockwell voices Raymond “Ray” Gunn, an old-fashioned private detective trying to survive in a future where much of a detective’s traditional legwork has been replaced by technology. He works alongside Eyera, a cyclopean alien voiced by musician and actor Tom Waits.
The case at the center of the film begins when Ray encounters Venus Nova, voiced by Johansson. Venus is one of Metropia’s biggest stars, but her celebrity is accompanied by scandal. Ray’s involvement with her pulls him into a mystery involving murder, aliens and the less glamorous parts of the seemingly optimistic city.
All three performers bring recognizable voices to the production. Rockwell already has a prominent animation role as Mr. Wolf in The Bad Guys franchise, while Johansson’s previous voice performances include Ash in the Sing films. She also delivered an almost entirely vocal performance as the artificial intelligence Samantha in Spike Jonze’s Her.
Waits is a particularly distinctive addition. Better known for his music and live-action performances, his gravelly voice is immediately identifiable. Bird has described himself as a longtime admirer of Waits and said the performer’s combination of music and acting made him an intriguing choice for Eyera.
Ray Gunn’s Expanded Voice Cast
The September trailer arrived alongside a much broader picture of the performers Bird has assembled for Metropia.
Rockwell, Johansson and Waits are joined by Matt Berry as Francis “Slugsy” Xavier and Alan Tudyk as Barry Vogel. Bird voices two characters named Gunsol and Musker, while Patton Oswalt voices a Hologram.
The wider ensemble includes Bobby Cannavale, Michael Chernus, Kether Donohue, Michelle Rodriguez, Aasif Mandvi, Matt Jones, Kathryn Hunter, John Ratzenberger and dancer and choreographer Justin Peck. Character information has not yet been announced for every member of the cast.
It is a group containing performers with very different relationships to animation and voice acting. Tudyk has accumulated extensive animation credits alongside his live-action career, while Oswalt and Ratzenberger are familiar voices across numerous animated productions. Others are more closely associated with live-action film, television, music or performance in other mediums.
That mixture appears to be deliberate. Bird has explained that his primary concern when assembling an animated cast is finding voices that remain interesting even after they have been heard repeatedly.
Matt Berry Takes On Slugsy
Among the most distinctive additions is Matt Berry as Francis “Slugsy” Xavier, one of the figures occupying Metropia’s criminal underworld.
Slugsy is a huge, sponge-like crime boss whose design and presence draw from the imposing heavies of classic film noir. The character fits particularly well with Berry’s unmistakable vocal style, which has made his delivery almost as recognizable as his appearance.
Berry is best known to many audiences as Laszlo Cravensworth in What We Do in the Shadows, but his voice credits have steadily grown alongside his live-action work. His deep, highly theatrical delivery has appeared across animation, games and other voice performances, making Slugsy another role built around a voice that is difficult to mistake for anyone else’s.
That quality is particularly relevant to Bird’s approach to Ray Gunn. Rather than treating the cast purely as a collection of recognizable names, the director has spoken about what individual voices provide to the animators responsible for turning those recordings into physical performances.
Brad Bird Wants Voices That Keep Animators Inspired
Bird has offered an unusually practical explanation for what he looks for when casting an animated film.
A line that takes an actor only a few seconds to perform can require an animator weeks to complete. During that process, the animator may hear the same recording hundreds of times while studying its rhythm, pauses and emphasis and translating those qualities into facial expressions and movement.
For Bird, that makes a performance capable of sustaining repeated listening particularly valuable. The recording is not simply dialogue placed over completed animation. It becomes part of the raw material from which the animated performance is constructed.
That philosophy helps explain a cast containing voices as different as Rockwell, Johansson, Waits, Berry and Tudyk. Each has a recognizable rhythm and vocal personality that can give animators details to interpret visually.
Bird’s willingness to search outside conventional casting choices goes even further. One of the film’s underground weapons dealers is reportedly voiced by “Buck,” the former soccer coach of Bird’s son. The unusual choice follows a long animation tradition in which directors sometimes discover that the right voice for a character belongs to someone who is not primarily a professional actor.
Brad Bird Returns to the Recording Booth
Bird himself is also part of the Ray Gunn cast, voicing Gunsol and Musker, two alien henchmen.
His decision to perform characters in his own film is not unprecedented. Bird famously provided the voice of Edna Mode in The Incredibles and Incredibles 2, turning what could have been a relatively small supporting character into one of the franchise’s most recognizable personalities.
Bird initially recorded Edna’s dialogue as a reference while attempting to demonstrate how he wanted the character performed. The temporary performance ultimately proved difficult to replace, and his voice became part of the finished character.
Ray Gunn therefore continues a part of Bird’s career that can sometimes be overshadowed by his work as a writer and director. He may be overseeing the entire production, but he is also contributing directly to the vocal population of Metropia.
Ray Gunn Finally Reaches the Screen After Three Decades
The size of the cast announcement becomes even more notable when placed against the film’s unusually long history.
Bird began developing the idea more than 30 years ago, before he directed The Iron Giant in 1999. The basic concept has remained remarkably consistent despite the changes in animation that occurred while the project struggled to reach production.
Bird has described his original pitch as The Maltese Falcon meeting Buck Rogers. The resulting world combines the private detectives, femme fatales and shadowy criminal figures of 1940s noir with a version of the future imagined through a pre-World War II lens.
Metropia is consequently filled with Art Deco influences, enormous skyscrapers, flying cars, jetpacks, aliens and futuristic technology. Underneath the city’s optimistic architecture is the darker world that Ray Gunn encounters while investigating his latest case.
The film also represents Bird’s attempt to push against the assumption that large-scale animation must primarily be aimed at children. While Ray Gunn retains the spectacle and adventure associated with animated features, its detective story and noir influences allow the director to explore a different corner of the medium.
Ray Gunn Arrives in Theaters Before Netflix
Audiences will have two opportunities to see Ray Gunn in December.
The film will begin a limited theatrical release on December 4, 2026, including limited 70mm presentations. Two weeks later, on December 18, Ray Gunn will make its global streaming debut exclusively on Netflix.
The December release will bring an unusually long production journey to an end. Bird conceived the world decades ago, long before many of the films that eventually defined his career, and the technology used to create animated features has transformed repeatedly during the project’s development.
What remained was Bird’s basic idea of combining a hardboiled detective story with an extravagant science-fiction future. Now that world has voices to match it.
Rockwell’s weary detective, Johansson’s troubled celebrity, Waits’ alien partner and Berry’s imposing crime boss sit alongside experienced animation performers, live-action actors and some decidedly unconventional casting choices. For a director who believes animators should be able to discover something new every time they replay an actor’s line, Ray Gunn has assembled a cast designed to give them plenty to listen to.