After a string of blockbusters in animation, including Ratatouille and both Incredibles movies, as well as Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in live action, filmmaker Brad Bird is finally getting the chance to make his dream project via Ray Gunn. The upcoming Netflix release is a blend of retro futurist science fiction and noir mystery, with the CGI animated project following the titular gumshoe (voiced by Sam Rockwell) and his alien partner Eyera (Tom Waits) as they investigate a case involving pop superstar Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson). Ahead of Ray Gunn’s release, we got the chance to speak to Bird about an older unmade film he worked on previously, an adaptation of Will Eisner’s legendary comic book series The Spirit. Written and drawn by Eisner throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, the original comic followed a private investigator without superpowers named Denny Colt who had been pronounced dead. Using his “resurrection” to build a supernatural mythology around himself, the Spirit went after criminals who slipped through the law’s cracks.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});In the early 1980s, Bird and fellow Cal Arts grad Jerry Rees began work on an animated feature of The Spirit with Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz. An impressive pencil test animation was completed, but a studio backer could not be found. The fact that the cartoon project was geared more toward tough action/noir mystery than funny animals/songs made financiers nervous, so it was abandoned. Bird went on to make a name for himself on television with Family Dog and The Simpsons. Eventually he took another stab at getting a more mature animated feature off the ground in the early ‘90s with Ray Gunn, which began as a hand-drawn, two-dimensional project at Turner Pictures, then at Warner Bros. before the latter studio had him pivot to The Iron Giant. With Ray Gunn now resurrected with action-packed footage presented to the public, it becomes clear that lead character Raymond Gunn definitely has Denny Colt vibes. In essence, this is a transmutation of Brad Bird’s original concept for The Spirit. “I wasn’t consciously aware of it, but it was an unscratched itch,” admits Bird of that project’s retro pulp detective vibe. The concept for Ray Gunn was sparked by the director misinterpreting the B-52’s song “Planet Claire” (“she drove a Plymouth Satellite, faster than the speed of light”), which he mistook for the theme song from 1950s TV show Peter Gunn. The crossed wires led his mind to picture a detective like Gunn in a science fiction context.As Bird elaborates, “Based on misunderstanding a song, I just started piling ideas into it. It wasn’t until later that I figured out, ‘Oh, it’s because you didn’t get to make The Spirit.’ It’s different from The Spirit in a lot of ways, but there was something about noir. Eisner was probably the most cinematic person to ever do a graphic novel. I found out about it because I loved movies: William Friedkin at one point wanted to do The Spirit and he said it’s the Citizen Kane of comic books, so that immediately hooked me. I was like, ‘I gotta read The Spirit.’ They started reprinting them, so I read all the reprints, and that’s how I got involved in The Spirit… but I never got to scratch that itch until now.”His partnership with Ray Gunn co-writer Matthew Robbins (Dragonslayer, Batteries Not Included) also emerged out of the canceled project.“Matthew was dropping by Gary Kurtz’s company when Jerry Rees and I were doing The Spirit, and that’s how I met Matthew,” Bird says. “We just stayed in touch over the years, and early on in my career people didn’t feel comfortable with me writing something alone. They wanted somebody with more experience, which Matthew definitely has. We co-wrote the third and fourth drafts of Ray Gunn together, then I went on to do five or six drafts after that. I still see Matthew all the time and talk with him. He’s a good friend.”While The Spirit eventually came to live-action as a 1987 TV movie starring Sam J. Jones and a failed 2008 feature directed by Frank Miller, a proper animated version closer to Eisner’s work is still a dream for many comic book fans. For Brad Bird, the spirit of his film lives on in Ray Gunn. Ray Gunn premieres on Netflix on Dec. 18.The post Brad Bird Reveals How Aborted The Spirit Movie Influenced Ray Gunn (Exclusive) appeared first on Den of Geek.