Watch Brad Bird's 1980 Pencil Animation Test Trailer For THE SPIRIT

Before Brad Bird made The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, he wanted to make an animated adaptation of the classic comic book The Spirit. To try and sell the idea of an animated adaptation of The Spirit, he created a pencil test trailer and it makes me wish that this film would've happened! 

Bird was working with producers Gary Kurtz and Steven Paul Leiva who worked on the films like Stay Tuned, Space Jam, American Graffiti, Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Dark Crystal.

I love the stylized animation and character design and I wish Bird would have been able to make this movie!

In 2008 as Frank Miller's live action feature film based on Will Eisner's "The Spirit" was being released I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times on the time, back in 1980, when I became involved with Brad Bird and Gary Kurtz (producer of the first two "Star Wars"