Brad Bird’s *Ray Gunn* steps out of the shadows
The most cinephile-charged reveal is Ray Gunn, which is now set for a global Netflix debut on December 18. Bird’s film is described as a noir sci-fi story set in an alternate 1939 Metropia, following private eye Raymond Gunn through a case involving aliens, murder and a multimedia star named Venus Nova.
That premise matters less as plot than as visual promise. Bird has always been a filmmaker of movement and architecture — of bodies crossing space with wit, dread and musical timing — and the idea of him working in a retro-futurist noir register gives Netflix a prestige animation object with real auteur weight. The voice cast, led by Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Waits, adds another layer of texture: not simply star wattage, but voices with grain, timing and tonal eccentricity.
Skydance Animation is producing, and Netflix showed both new images and concept art at Annecy. The streamer is positioning Ray Gunn as part of its December awards push, which suggests confidence not only in the film’s pedigree but in its capacity to sit in the season’s larger conversation about animation as cinema rather than category filler.
*Ghostbusters: Night Shift* looks backward to move the franchise sideways
Netflix also unveiled a first look at Ghostbusters: Night Shift, an animated series set in 1994 on the franchise timeline. That places it between Ivan Reitman’s original 1980s films and the more recent sequel era of Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
The series is executive produced by Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan and Dan Aykroyd, a trio that keeps the new project formally tethered to the franchise’s lineage. Netflix showed concept art and framed the show as having a grittier, retro aesthetic, with a blend of franchise-specific humor and supernatural scares. It is expected to arrive in 2027.
The 1994 setting is the detail to watch. It gives the series a liminal space: close enough to the original films to borrow their analogue grime and deadpan comic rhythm, but distant enough from the recent films to avoid feeling like merely another connective-tissue exercise. If the visual grammar truly embraces that retro grit, Night Shift could become more than brand maintenance; it could test whether Ghostbusters still works when translated into animated atmosphere rather than nostalgic quotation.
Netflix’s animation slate is chasing both prestige and scale
The Annecy showcase was broader than two headline titles. Netflix also set a December 11 release for In Waves, an animated surfing story about love and grief acquired out of Cannes. Directed by Phuong Mai Nguyen and starring Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu, the film adapts AJ Dungo’s graphic novel about a teenager navigating love and loss. Netflix is positioning it alongside Ray Gunn as a prestige play.
On the commercial side, the streamer presented Steps, a subversive Cinderella retelling from director Alyce Tzue and Amy Poehler’s Paper Kite Productions, due November 2, with voice talent including Ali Wong and Amanda Seyfried. It also showed a new teaser for The One Piece, WIT Studio’s anime adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s manga, planned for February 2027 and described as a fresh take separate from both Toei Animation’s long-running anime and Netflix’s live-action series. Ricky Gervais’ adult animated comedy Alley Cats was teased with a first-look image ahead of an August 7 premiere.
Netflix framed the announcements against its broader animation reach, citing 130 million monthly viewers and 1.5 billion anime views in 2025. For viewers who track the awards race, Ray Gunn and In Waves are the immediate titles to keep on the calendar. For franchise watchers, Ghostbusters: Night Shift is the more revealing long game: a test of whether streaming animation can give familiar mythology a new texture, not just another extension.