Pixar’s next original film is a mob movie, and its hero is a stray black cat who hates water in a city built on it. The studio’s official trailer for Gatto is out, with Mark Ruffalo voicing Nero, a scrappy cat working off a debt to a feline crime boss in Venice, Italy.
Laurence Fishburne plays that boss, Rocco. Pixar describes him as ruthless, and its synopsis says Nero, stuck owing him, is pushed into an unlikely friendship that might finally show him his purpose, if the city does not get him first. Gatto opens only in theaters on March 5, 2027.
The team behind Luca goes back to Italy
Director Enrico Casarosa and producer Andrea Warren made Luca, Pixar’s 2021 Oscar nominee set on the Italian Riviera. Gatto moves the pair north to the canals of Venice and swaps sunny seaside summer for something darker and more comic. The screenplay is by Casarosa with Tripper Clancy and Andy Siara.
The look is the big swing. When Pixar first unveiled the title at the Annecy animation festival in June 2025, its art director said the first image was not concept art but the finished style: hand-painted 2D textures layered over computer animation. The trailer is the longest stretch of that style audiences have seen so far.
A crowded cast of cats, pigeons and the underworld
Alongside the official trailer, the full voice cast has been filled out. A few of the more unusual roles:
- Bianca Babaşa voices Maja, a busker who takes Nero in against his wishes.
- Enrico Casarosa himself as Saverio, a slapstick pigeon campaigning for a pigeon union.
- Natasia Demetriou as Charon, a Sphynx cat in the underworld who trims one of Nero’s whiskers for every life he loses.
- Jamie Demetriou as the Plague Doctor, a dodo who hands Nero his nine lives.
John Turturro, Isabella Rossellini, Rhys Darby, Jason Schwartzman, Jason Mantzoukas and Tracey Ullman round out the ensemble. Dario Marianelli, whose credits include Atonement, is composing the score.
How the release date moved
The film’s calendar has shifted more than once, which explains why a 2027 release is already getting a full trailer in November 2026:
Pixar first reserved a date for an untitled film in August 2024. In September 2025 that date put Gatto head to head with Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. That December, Disney pulled it forward from June 18 to March 5, 2027, a jump of 105 days, clearing it away from both the Spider-Verse film and DreamWorks’ Shrek 5. With the trailer arriving now, the campaign has roughly 16 weeks to run before opening day.
Theaters will also pair Gatto with Loving Dory, a new short from the Finding Nemo world, so Pixar fans get two releases on one ticket.
Why a cat noir fits Pixar now
Gangster stories are rare territory for the studio, and the superstitions around black cats give the premise a built-in hook: Nero’s bad luck is literally his reputation. It also lands as hand-crafted animation is having a moment, from the painted Cannes winner Iron Boy, which just set a January US release, to studio fights over finished films such as Coyote vs. Acme’s late run at the animated feature Oscar.
Pixar’s own pitch is plain enough. Nero has spent years dodging trouble in a canal-crossed, superstitious city, and he is starting to wonder if he has lived the right lives. Audiences find out how many he has left on March 5, 2027.
Further reading
Image: Andrei Postolache, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
