The Luca team brings Mark Ruffalo and Laurence Fishburne to the canals of Venice for an original animated adventure about a black cat, a mob boss, and nine lives lived wrong.
Pixar’s going back to Italy, and this time there’s a feline crime family involved. The studio behind Luca has just unveiled Gatto, an original animated adventure set in the shadow-streaked underbelly of Venice, where cats rule the canals and a scrappy black tom named Nero is starting to wonder if he’s wasted all nine of his lives.
The teaser trailer introduces us to Nero, voiced by Mark Ruffalo, and Rocco, the ruthless mob boss cat played by Laurence Fishburne. The scene is an interrogation with sharp comic timing—two cats leaning over a third, Venice shimmering just beyond the frame. It’s classic Pixar texture: tactile, atmospheric, and alive with personality. Ruffalo brings that bruised charm he’s perfected over two decades, while Fishburne’s gravitas feels like it was engineered for a mob boss with whiskers.
The Luca Duo Returns
Director Enrico Casarosa and producer Andrea Warren are back together, the same pair who gave us the sun-drenched friendship of Luca, which earned an Oscar nomination. Gatto looks like a tonal shift—darker, more existential, rooted in superstition and debt rather than summer nostalgia. Nero’s indebted to Rocco, trapped in the canals, forced into an unlikely friendship that might finally give him purpose. Or Venice might swallow him first.
March 2027, Cinema Only
Pixar’s leaning into theatrical again. Gatto will release exclusively in cinemas in March 2027, continuing the studio’s return to the big screen after the streaming pivot of the pandemic years. It’s a smart bet: if animated felines are having a moment, Pixar’s version is bound to be the most beautifully lit.
