In Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn, private eye Ray Gunn (voiced by Sam Rockwell) is drawn into a wild, unpredictable conspiracy involving aliens and secret identities in 1939 Metropia that all seems fixated on the very famous, very temperamental pop star Venus Nova (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).
Awards Buzz spoke with Bird and Johansson about how they felt about the chance to work together. Brad also described how Johansson’s involvement helped share her character:
‘‘I’m a huge fan of Scarlett and her really huge career. The number of great movies that she’s been great in just makes my jaw drop, and so to have her work on something was just a dream. As a character, she was there in the first draft in some form. I imagined her as a train wreck that you then learn about and become sympathetic to, but your first reaction should be, oh my god, she’s trouble. And that was a challenge as a writer, because you have to make her an entertaining train wreck and then say, we want you to sympathize with the train wreck! We want you to understand why she got to that point.”
Johansson conveyed the excitement she felt at this opportunity:
“I was so excited to meet Brad. I have been an enormous fan of his. I love his work so much. When the opportunity came and said, oh this is a script by Brad Bird, I was like, ah! I wrote back, Brad Bird!!! All exclamation points! I was so pumped, and I loved the script. If I love a script and I’m reading it and there’s a part for me, I’m most probably going to do it. I I never want another person to do it if I love it. I was just excited to meet Brad and talk more about the project and get to know him too. You feel each other out. Do we like each other? Are we seeing the same thing? At that point, you’re already working on it in a weird way because then you start to see the same thing and different ideas for what the future will be creatively pop up. It’s fun. That’s what it’s supposed to be, that collaborative spark that you have with another creative person.”
Ray Gunn premieres in select theaters and on limited 70mm screens on December 4th and streams on Netflix December 18th.
