Pixar’s Gatto Names 17 More Voices. A Romani Musician Plays Papu Janko, and Luca’s Bully Returns

Pixar has named 17 more voices for Gatto, its cat caper set in Venice, and the list is stranger and more interesting than a row of famous names. A Romani musician from Bulgaria plays Papu Janko. The actor who played the bully in Luca is back in a new role. The director is a pigeon. The new trailer is out, and the film reaches cinemas on 5 March 2027.

Disney and Pixar released the full trailer and a new poster on 12 November, along with the rest of the cast. Mark Ruffalo and Laurence Fishburne were already confirmed back in June. Ruffalo voices Nero, a black cat who wonders whether he has “lived the right lives,” in Disney’s words. Fishburne is Rocco, the feline mob boss Nero owes.

The story turns on a job. Rocco wants a rare violin stolen from a street musician called Maja, and Nero ends up liking her far more than a thief should. Enrico Casarosa directs and Andrea Warren produces. It’s the same pair who made Luca, Pixar’s 2021 film about two sea monsters on the Italian Riviera.

Hear the voices: Nero is asked for a password in the first seconds, and Rocco’s “Tuna Tuesday” follows at 0:16. Video: Pixar, on YouTube

Seventeen names, and a few surprises

The new names lean comic. John Turturro plays Capitano Briganti and Isabella Rossellini is the Contessa. Jason Schwartzman is Vivaldi, which seems fair for a film that’s partly about a violin. Rhys Darby voices Focaccia, Tracey Ullman is Luisa, Sherry Cola is Regina, Jason Mantzoukas is Rico and Matt Jones is Enzo.

Natasia Demetriou and Jamie Demetriou take two of the stranger parts. She plays Charon, the ferryman of the dead in Greek myth, and he plays the Plague Doctor, named for the beaked mask that has become a Venice carnival favourite. In a story about a cat burning through his nine lives, those two look set to keep busy.

Image: Disney and Pixar

Bianca Babaşa voices Maja, the street musician at the centre of the job. She’s the one human Nero can’t stop thinking about, and the trailer gives her some of its warmest moments. The rest of the list is full of names most moviegoers won’t know yet: Beatrice Manfredi as Martinelli, Marco Calvani as Maestro Foscari and Austin Madison as a fishmonger.

A musician from the mahala

The most unexpected name on the list is Rumen Sali Shopov, who plays Papu Janko. He’s best known as a musician, not an actor. The vocal ensemble Kitka, which has worked with him, describes him as a “master Turkish-Romani multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, bandleader, music teacher, composer/arranger, dancer, and drum-maker.”

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Shopov was “born and raised in the mahala (Romani neighborhood) of Gotse Delchev,” a town in southwestern Bulgaria, according to Kitka. He started on the dumbek, a goblet-shaped drum, and guitar, then became a soloist on the tambura and concertmaster of a state ensemble. Kitka points out that in communist Bulgaria such posts were “extremely rare for artists of Romani heritage.” He moved to the United States in 2002 and has taught and toured across the Americas since.

Pixar hasn’t said who Papu Janko is or how much he’s in the film. For a story built around a violin and a girl who plays it in the street, casting a working folk musician in the role looks like a choice made on purpose. Music runs through the whole project: Dario Marianelli, who won an Oscar for Atonement, writes the score, and it includes music from the violinist Barbora Botošová.

Luca’s team, back in Italy

Gatto brings a few familiar voices back from Luca. Saverio Raimondo, who played Ercole Visconti, the swaggering teenage bully of Portorosso, returns as a new character, Ugo. Jesse Andrews, who co-wrote Luca’s screenplay with Mike Jones, voices Bartolomeo.

Casarosa is in the cast too, as a pigeon named Saverio. Directors voicing small parts in their own films is an old Pixar habit.

When TheWrap saw early footage in June, Casarosa explained why he wanted to make a film about “the secret world of Venice cats.” He described the film’s look as “an immersive, expressive painterly look” and said of his hero: “Everyone is superstitious and they think he’s bad luck.” He also let slip that these cats are “really into disco.”

Voice first, then the animation

For voice actors, the most telling detail about Gatto came from an interview Casarosa gave in June. Ruffalo has years of practice re-recording lines over finished footage, the way live-action films fix their sound. Pixar works the other way round.

“He’s used to voice acting because of Hulk, he wanted to ADR everything but we want the voice first & then we animate,” Casarosa told Discussing Film, as reported by Netflix Junkie. ADR, or automated dialogue replacement, is the studio session where actors match new lines to pictures that already exist.

In an animated feature, the recording comes before almost everything else. Animators study the takes, the breaths, the little hesitations, and build the character’s face around them. It’s why casting a voice like Shopov’s, or a comic as quick as Darby or Ullman, shapes a Pixar film far more than casting for a live-action dub ever could.

When you can hear the rest

Gatto opens on 5 March 2027, exclusively in cinemas. It will play with Loving Dory, a short set in the world of Finding Nemo, with Ellen DeGeneres back as Dory. Lou Hamou-Lhadj writes and directs the short, and Pixar says the romance in it goes from “a little clingy to outright toxic.”

No Spanish-language voice cast has been announced so far. When it comes, the dubbing directors will have an unusual brief: a cast list that mixes Hollywood stars, a returning face from Luca and a Bulgarian folk musician, nearly all of them playing animals. The full English list is on Disney’s press site.

Sources: Disney UK press release, 12 November 2026; Pixar official trailer on YouTube; Pirates & Princesses; Cartoon Brew; TheWrap; Netflix Junkie, citing Discussing Film; Kitka; Wikipedia (Luca). Images: Disney and Pixar.

Lee este artículo en español: Gatto, de Pixar, suma 17 voces. Un músico romaní es Papu Janko y regresa el bravucón de Luca

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