Pixar’s new Gatto trailer brings a more detailed introduction to its Venice-set adventure, with additional voice performers and a newly identified musical team. Disney released the trailer and poster on November 12, confirming that Dario Marianelli is writing the original score and that the ensemble now includes John Turturro, Isabella Rossellini, Jason Schwartzman and Rhys Darby. The film opens in theaters March 5, 2027.
The movie reunites director Enrico Casarosa and producer Andrea Warren, the team behind Luca. Its protagonist is Nero, a black cat voiced by Mark Ruffalo, who owes a debt to a feline crime boss called Rocco, voiced by Laurence Fishburne. The studio’s premise places Nero’s remaining life and his sense of purpose at the center of an unexpected friendship with a street musician.
Disney supplied the trailer and casting news. Reference coverage includes Dan Sarto’s November 12 Animation World Network report and Jamie Lang’s Cartoon Brew article that evening. These reports accompany a studio announcement; the available evidence does not establish that either outlet independently broke the cast news.
The trailer develops a visual idea introduced at Annecy
The new footage is particularly useful for animation followers because Gatto’s appearance is part of its creative identity. In his November 12 Cartoon Brew report, Lang describes computer animation combined with hand-painted two-dimensional textures and shaders. Visible brushwork extends across characters and architecture, while some compositions use a flattened perspective associated with illustration.
Gatto was unveiled at Annecy in 2025, and Casarosa returned with footage in 2026. The November trailer develops that documented history rather than announcing the project for the first time.
As visual analysis, the significance lies in the relationship between surface and movement. A computer-generated character can retain dimensional form while its surface suggests a painted mark. Keeping that mark visible gives audiences something different to read from a smooth, uniformly finished object. The technique can make the act of illustration part of the image without requiring the entire production to use traditional drawn animation.
Earlier footage explains Nero’s dilemma
Drew Taylor’s June 26 report for TheWrap provides additional background from the Annecy presentation. Casarosa connected the story’s origins to the stray cats that once seemed to occupy Venice’s canals and passageways. His interest was the hidden life of those animals and the society they might maintain outside human attention.
According to Taylor’s account of the footage and presentation, Rocco’s organization steals cat-related artwork. Nero’s usefulness comes partly from people’s superstitious response to a black cat, which lets him enter places other animals cannot. His attempt to leave that world leads to an assignment involving a street musician’s violin, an object whose carved head resembles a cat.
The presentation included a gondola passage in which Nero and the musician hear an opera nearby. Taylor also reported Casarosa’s explanation of the visual methods: pronounced linework, motion smears, multiple limbs in movement and simplified reflections intended to evoke brushwork. Those details come from the June presentation, not a claim that every sequence described there appears in the November trailer or will remain unchanged in the finished film.
A larger cast gives the city more inhabitants
The new studio announcement identifies Bianca Babaşa as Maja, the street musician. Turturro plays Capitano Briganti, Rossellini plays Contessa, Schwartzman voices Vivaldi and Darby voices Focaccia. Other announced roles include Sherry Cola as Regina, Jason Mantzoukas as Rico and Tracey Ullman as Luisa. The expanded list gives names to more of the characters surrounding Nero’s immediate problem.
There is also a connection between the director and the cast. Cartoon Brew identifies Casarosa as the voice of Saverio, a pigeon. His participation continues an aspect of the project already described in festival coverage, rather than a replacement for the two previously announced leads. Ruffalo and Fishburne remain attached to Nero and Rocco.
For audiences, those credits establish who is participating, but the finished performances still have to be judged in context. A cast announcement does not establish how much screen time a character receives. The useful confirmed development is that Pixar has now supplied a broader map of the ensemble alongside a more extensive piece of promotional footage.
The creative path from La Luna to Luca
Casarosa’s earlier films offer specific background for this return to an Italian setting. Pixar lists his short La Luna as a 2011 release. It follows a boy accompanying his father and grandfather in a small boat as he discovers the family’s unusual work. The premise asks how he will find his own approach amid the two older men’s conflicting traditions.
Luca later expanded Casarosa’s work into a feature-length Italian coastal adventure. Pixar’s official production material describes Portorosso as a fictional town informed by the Cinque Terre. Sets supervisor Chris Bernardi discusses buildings and businesses that convey accumulated history, while cinematographer Kim White describes studying light bouncing through narrow streets and between buildings.
The same production page explains that Luca’s appearance was designed around a child’s experience of summer. Color and shading art director Chia-Han Jennifer Chang describes a palette made more vibrant and saturated than everyday reality. Casarosa emphasizes warmth, imperfection and the visible feeling of an artist’s hand in computer animation.
Those documented choices provide a useful comparison with Gatto’s painted surfaces. Both projects make a location part of a character’s point of view. Venice, however, supplies a different environment from Portorosso, and Nero brings a different problem from Luca’s summer adventure. The connection is a continuing creative interest, not an announced narrative link between the movies.
Music adds a newly confirmed creative collaborator
Disney’s November announcement identifies Marianelli as an Academy Award-winning composer and says the score includes music from violinist Barbora Botošová. Cartoon Brew also places his animation experience in context by noting credits on Kubo and the Two Strings and Wildwood. His participation connects the project with a composer experienced in supporting highly designed animated worlds.
The violinist credit has a clear relationship to the published premise, which includes a street musician and a violin at the center of Nero’s predicament. That is a connection between confirmed story elements and announced personnel, not advance knowledge of the score’s themes. Disney has not provided enough musical material in this announcement to assess the completed soundtrack.
Gatto’s next confirmed destination remains its March theatrical release. The November material makes the project more concrete through its ensemble, musical collaborators and fuller look at an illustrated Venice. For Pixar viewers, the central attraction is an original character whose immediate trouble is tied to a particular place, with the returning Luca team pursuing that setting through a distinctly painted visual approach.
References and reporting credit
Primary announcement Disney UK Press. New Trailer and Poster for Disney and Pixar’s All-New Animated Adventure Gatto Available Now. November 12, 2026.
Official film information Pixar Animation Studios. Gatto. Undated; checked November 13, 2026.
Reference article Dan Sarto, Animation World Network. Pixar Drops New Gatto Trailer and Poster. November 12, 2026.
Reference article Jamie Lang, Cartoon Brew. Gatto Trailer Offers a Closer Look at Pixar’s Painterly Turn. November 12, 2026.
Festival reporting and filmmaker remarks Drew Taylor, TheWrap. We’ve Seen New Footage From Pixar’s Uniquely Animated Cat Movie Gatto. June 26, 2026.
Production background Pixar Animation Studios. Luca. Undated; checked November 13, 2026.
Director’s earlier short Pixar Animation Studios. La Luna. Undated; lists 2011 release; checked November 13, 2026.
