Screenshot: YouTube With the release of Toy Story 5 this summer, Pixar is making sure to keep the anticipation pump primed with the release of a teaser for its next big-screen production. Gatto is the second feature film — he also directed the 2011 short La Luna, which was nominated for an Academy Award — from Enrico Casarosa, who also helmed 2021’s Luca for Pixar. That film was praised for its unique and painterly animation style, and that carries through to our first look at his new movie as well. Gatto was first announced last summer by Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter at a presentation ahead of the Annecy Animation Festival in France. “We’re trying to bring the depth and dimension that you expect from a Pixar film; at the same time, capturing that painterly texture that you see in Venice,” he said at the time. “We are doing a bunch of new tests and experiments.”Compared to the bright and colorful image above, the texture Docter teased last summer is a little less visible in the Gatto teaser, largely because it takes place at night under the moonlight. The colors are more muted, but the broad, expressive brush strokes are there: You can see them in the clay tiles on the roof where sharp-clawed enforcers guard the room where a bad kitty is being questioned by feline Mafiosos. (You know they’re gangsters because the Godfather theme is playing in the background.) The indoor attic setting is also painterly in style, almost like something out of a Studio Ghibli movie. By comparison, the character design hews more closely to Pixar’s signature visual style, but with an artistic flair that evokes classic hand-drawn 2-D animation. Since Gatto was first announced, Mark Ruffalo has joined the voice cast as hydrophobic black cat Nero, as has Laurence Fishburne as kitty-cat gangster Rocco. Newcomer Ismail Elsene has also signed up to play Lauren, a role that isn’t clearly defined just yet but will presumably be important to the story. On that note, here’s Pixar’s official synopsis: “In Gatto, after years of maneuvering the canal-ridden, superstitious city of Venice, Italy, Nero begins to question whether he’s lived the right lives. Indebted to Rocco, the local feline mob boss, Nero finds himself in a quandary and is forced to forge a truly unexpected friendship that may finally lead him to his purpose—unless Venice gets the better of him first.”Gatto will open in theaters on March 5, 2027.