‘Ray Gunn’ Looks Like an Animated Sci-Fi Noir (From Netflix)

There’s a new Incredibles sequel coming soon from Pixar. But the guy who created the characters and helmed the previous two films in that series didn’t direct this one. (He did write its screenplay.)

Instead, Brad Bird — whose previous films also include The Iron Giant and Ratatouille — made Ray Gunn, a similarly retro animated action movie that jams together a couple different old school genres. In an interview with Tudum, Bird described the film as “The Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers.”

“I like both of those genres, and blending them together seemed fun,” Bird said, adding “and a chance to play with a lot of very cinematic elements and extreme characters.”

And that’s definitely what it looks like from the first trailer; it’s a sci-fi noir about a private eye (voiced by Sam Rockwell) who gets mixed up with a femme fatale (Scarlett Johansson) in a futuristic world filled with aliens, lasers, and flying cars.

Check out the trailer for the movie below:

Bird supposedly had the first idea for this project decades ago, around the time of The Iron Giant. It’s taken all this time for the material to come together and for someone — Skydance and Netflix, in this case — to agree to produce and release it.

Here is Ray Gunn’s official synopsis:

In Metropia, a gigantic city in an alternate future as seen from 1939, private eye Raymond Gunn is drawn into a case involving aliens, murder and a multimedia star named Venus Nova.

Ray Gunn opens in select theaters on December 4. It premieres on Netflix on December 18.