In 2008, Scarlett Johansson released Anywhere I Lay My Head, a debut studio album built primarily from interpretations of cover songs by Tom Waits and Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan — “Falling Down,” “Fannin Street,” and others reinterpreted with David Bowie lending backing vocals. It wasn’t a collaboration with Waits. No Waits performance credit appears on the record. Their connection ran through his songwriting and her choice to inhabit it — nothing more, nothing less.
Eighteen years later, both voices appear in the same animated feature. That’s the reunion — not a recording session, but a casting sheet. If you’ve ever wondered how an artistic connection forged through song interpretation eventually finds its way onto a Netflix animation slate, Ray Gunn is your answer.
What Ray Gunn Actually Is
Brad Bird’s long-gestating noir drops Rockwell, Johansson, and Waits into a 1939 vision of the future.
Set in Metropia — a city imagined as the future through the lens of 1939 — the film follows Raymond Gunn, a private detective voiced by Sam Rockwell, as he untangles a murder case involving aliens. The central cast voices are:
- Sam Rockwell as Raymond Gunn, a private detective
- Scarlett Johansson as Venus Nova, the multimedia star at the mystery’s center
- Tom Waits as Eyera, Gunn’s one-eyed alien partner
Brad Bird wrote and directed Ray Gunn, a project that reportedly predates The Iron Giant — which itself arrived before The Incredibles and Ratatouille. That’s a long gestation for any film, animated or otherwise. The retro-futurist premise — hard-boiled detective fiction filtered through a 1950s science-fiction sensibility — gives Waits’ idiosyncratic vocal presence exactly the kind of noir atmosphere it was built for.
A Mishearing That Became a Movie
Bird’s origin story involves the B-52s, Henry Mancini, and a productive misunderstanding.
According to Bird, the project began when he misheard the B-52s’ “Planet Claire” as a cover of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” theme. That mishearing conjured the mood of a 1950s science-fiction film, which led him to the name Ray Gunn, which led to Metropia, which led to everything else. Present that sequence as Bird’s own creative account — not a documented historical derivation — and it still makes for one of the more charming origin stories in recent animation history.
The first trailer uses a slowed-down version of Sneaker Pimps’ “6 Underground,” supporting the film’s moody, stylized noir presentation. Whether that track appears in the finished film remains unconfirmed; trailer music and final soundtracks are different animals.
Produced by Skydance Animation for Netflix, Ray Gunn arrives on the following schedule:
| Release | Date |
|---|---|
| Select theaters and limited 70mm screenings | December 4, 2026 |
| Netflix debut | December 18, 2026 |
Johansson’s relationship with Waits’ artistic world began through his words and melodies — absorbed, reinterpreted, and released into a 2008 album most people forgot she made. Now it continues through voice alone, inside a city that never existed, serving a story that took decades to tell. For a noir built on retro-futurism, that kind of slow burn feels right on time.
