When Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis' wordless wonder Flow won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at this year's Oscars, not only did it become the first truly independent animated film to scoop the top gong to date, but Zilbalodis' plucky black cat and its pals also beat Pixar and DreamWorks in the process. No mean feat given Pixar's Inside Out 2 had, at the time, just become the highest grossing animated movie ever made. Now, perhaps sensing a growing appetite among animation lovers for more original efforts, Pixar has today revealed at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival that Luca director Enrico Casarosa is making his own feline feature, Gatto, slated for release in 2027. And you can see a piece of concept art for the movie below; Set to blend a Pixar first hand-painted animation style with the studio's usual CG wizardry, Casarosa's new movie will see the filmmaker once again take viewers to Italy — and specifically, this time, Venice. There, per Gatto's official logline, "after years of manoeuvring the canal-ridden, superstitious city, a black cat named Nero begins to question whether he’s lived the right lives. 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." It's a hooky set-up, not instantly comparable to any other Pixar movie, and one made all the more enticing with the knowledge there'll be a strong musical component to the movie (Nero's tail is a big jazz fan, Annecy goers were told); for anyone who watched the luscious, sun-soaked Luca, you'll recall Casarosa's virtuosic deployment of Dan Romer to augment the sense of escape the vibrant town of Portorosso inspires. Whether Romer will contribute music for Gatto however remains to be seen — or, well, heard. Now, the announcement of Gatto — and imminent release of original sci-fi caper Elio — does nothing to change the generally held truth that big animation studios are otherwise still primarily favouring legacy sequels right about now (Toy Story 5, Incredibles 3, and Coco 2 are all at various stages of development currently, and Pixar's Annecy panel today revealed that Toy Story's forthcoming fivequel will feature a villainous tablet called LilyPad). But with Flow's recent Oscar success, Pixar's response in kind being to give a still relatively green filmmaker at the studio free rein to make a conceptually ambitious sounding, visually distinct original feature is a very positive sign. In fact, you could say we're feline pretty good about Gatto right about now. (Sorry.)