Pixar just announced the next movie on its always exciting upcoming slate and, for the first time in a long time, it feels a little like the studio is chasing trends instead of setting them. Which probably isn’t the case, but the timing does make it hard to ignore.
Just announced at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Pixar’s 2027 film is called Gatto. Directed by Luca helmer Enrico Casarosa, the film is set in Venice, Italy and follows a black cat named Nero who, “after years of maneuvering the canal-ridden, superstitious city… begins to question whether he’s lived the right life. Indebted to a local feline mob boss, Nero finds himself in a quandary and is forced to forge a truly unexpected friendship that may finally lead him to his purpose—unless Venice gets the better of him first.”
Sounds great, right? And, because it’s Pixar, it probably will be. Pixar movies are usually great because they take so long to make, so there’s a very good chance Gatto was in development long before November of last year. But, that’s when a French animated film called Flow was released and charmed film fans everywhere, ultimately leading to it winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Now, that’s almost certainly a coincidence—it’s not like animation and cats are some new, fresh idea—but Pixar’s first new movie announcement after the success of Flow also being a cat movie sure seems lucky.
Pixar has a lot happening before 2027, though. Next week, it’ll release Elio, the long-delayed story of a young boy going on an alien adventure. That’ll be followed in March 2026 by Hoppers, a film about humans being able to interact and talk with animals, and then in June 2026 we get Toy Story 5, which will see Buzz, Woody, and the gang tangle with technology. Then, after all that, comes Gatto. You see a glimpse of it above, and here’s the full piece of concept art.
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