The first trailer for The Saga of Rex–an independent, sixty-minute animated feature animated entirely by animator Michel Gagné–is now online for your viewing pleasure. A full press release and poster along with a still gallery for the ambitious project can be found below. The Saga of Rex is set to release sometime in 2027.

After 14 years of work, animation filmmaker Michel Gagné is finally ready to unveil the trailer for The Saga of Rex—a hand-drawn 2D animated feature film animated single-handedly by Gagné, with the assistance of one inbetweener, his friend Seung Kim.

The Saga of Rex is a feature-length hand-drawn animated film created and directed by Gagné, who spent 14 years bringing the project to life while continuing to do select work on major Hollywood feature films. During that time, he contributed to six other feature productions, using those projects to support the independent production while continuing to expand his own filmmaking skills.

The story began in 1998, when Gagné self-published a 32-page black-and-white hardcover book, A Search for Meaning: The Story of Rex. The character later evolved into a series of graphic-novel chapters published in Kazu Kibuishi’s acclaimed FLIGHT anthology between 2005 and 2010. Image Comics subsequently published the complete story as the graphic novel The Saga of Rex in 2010.

Gagné began developing the feature film in earnest following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012. Shortly afterward, the film was optioned by GRID Animation in Belgium. GRID ultimately relinquished the option in 2018, and the IP and all rights reverted to Gagné.

Free from the constraints of a traditional production structure, he embarked on an unusual experiment: making the feature himself, with the assistance of a single inbetweener.

The result is a film born from an intensely personal creative process—one in which Gagné created, designed and animated the film over more than a decade.

“I wanted to make the film that was in my soul,” says Gagné. “To do that, I needed to remove the commercial and transactional aspects of the process. The film became a pure form of expression, dictated by the story and by my own creative instincts.”

Gagné’s career spans decades of work in animation and visual effects, including work on numerous major feature films. He is a BAFTA and Annie Award-winning animation filmmaker whose distinctive visual style has been seen across films, video games, comics and more.

Yet The Saga of Rex represents something fundamentally different: an attempt to create an entire feature film according to one artist’s singular vision and on his own terms.

The film is now nearing completion, with final sound work underway. Gagné plans to have the film completely finished by the end of 2026, with festival screenings and release plans beginning in 2027.