He directed the traditional animated feature The Iron Giant (1999), adapted from a book by poet Ted Hughes; though critically lauded, it was a box-office bomb.

He moved to Pixar where he wrote and directed two computer-animated films, The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007) that were worldwide critical and financial smash hits; they earned Bird two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature wins and Best Original Screenplay nominations.

His father worked in the propane business, and his grandfather, Francis Wesley "Frank" Bird, who was born in County Sligo, Ireland, was a president and chief executive of the Montana Power Company.

[6] He began animating his first short subject at age 11; that same year, his family connection introduced him to composer George Bruns, who set him up a tour of Walt Disney Productions in Burbank, California.

[23] He tried for several years to adapt Will Eisner's comic book The Spirit to feature animation,[21] but studios declined, unwilling to take a risk given Disney's dominance.

Bird had hoped to develop the concept into theatrical shorts, like those from the golden age of American animation, but the market simply no longer existed.

[22] Instead, Bird moved back to Los Angeles and joined Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment,[15] and became involved with his television program Amazing Stories, an anthology series which debuted in 1985.

[6] Bird's cinematic sense of visual storytelling with Family Dog was uncommon in television animation to that point, mainly due to budgetary restrictions.

Most television productions retained rudimentary cinematography, with frequent abuse of standard close-ups, medium angles, and establishing shots to move the story along.

In contrast, Bird favored using more filmic techniques, utilizing extreme angles, long panning shots, quick camera cuts, pushed perspective, and so on.

Bird's work on Family Dog caught the eye of producers James L. Brooks and Sam Simon, who with Matt Groening were developing The Simpsons, the first prime time animated sitcom in decades for Fox.

In his role, Bird pushed the show's artists to visualize episodes as miniature films, taking inspiration from the work of Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles.

On a personal level, the job was deeply fulfilling; he attended weekly read-throughs which he found delightful,[31] and he considered the gig the only bright spot in the years following his sister's passing.

Bird signed a production deal with Turner Feature Animation in January 1995,[29][37] but the studio felt Ray Gunn would be too intense for its target demographic of young children.

Instead, they offered Bird several in-development projects, including a musical version of poet Ted Hughes' book The Iron Man, first envisioned by rocker Pete Townshend.

[21] Bird penned the screenplay with Tim McCanlies, which centers on a young boy named Hogarth Hughes, who discovers and befriends a giant alien robot during the Cold War in 1957.

The Iron Giant opened in August 1999 to rave reviews from critics, but very low ticket sales; theater owners discarded the picture after only a few weeks.

[34] He grew comforted by the "creative and supportive" atmosphere at Pixar, unlike many of the L.A. studios he had worked for; he convinced a core team to join him up north, including artists Tony Fucile, Teddy Newton, and Lou Romano, all of whom had contributed development artwork for The Incredibles for much of the past decade.

Bird's next project was Ratatouille (2007), which follows a rat named Remy, who dreams of becoming a chef and tries to achieve his goal by forming an alliance with a Parisian restaurant's garbage boy.

[42] Midway through the aughts, Bird was attached to direct an adaption of James Dalessandro's novel, 1906,[45] which chronicles the tumultuous earthquake that struck San Francisco a century prior.

Ghost Protocol was shot on location partially in Dubai, and includes a memorable scene when Cruise scales the newly erected Burj Khalifa.

In the film, a disillusioned genius inventor (George Clooney) and a teenage science enthusiast (Britt Robertson) embark to an intriguing alternate dimension known as "Tomorrowland," where their actions directly affect their own world.

Bird began writing its screenplay in earnest the next year; he attempted to distinguish the script from the breadth of superhero-related content released since the first film, focusing on the family dynamic rather than the superhero genre.

In 2022, it was announced that Bird had signed a deal with Skydance the previous year and reassembled frequent collaborators Michael Giacchino, Teddy Newton, Tony Fucile, Darren T. Holmes, and Jeffrey Lynch for the film.

[61] Following the announcement of Pixar’s Incredibles 3, one news outlet reported that Bird’s Ray Gunn for Skydance Animation was still being made as well and expected for release in 2026, though there has not been any official confirmation from the studio as of the time of said publishing.

[64] Bird says he was influenced by dozens of filmmakers, singling out early moviemakers Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd, to mid-twentieth century auteurs like David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney, and Akira Kurosawa.

More contemporary directors like Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Hayao Miyazaki,[52] and the Coen brothers have inspired Bird as well.

[31] His passion for the medium was evident even in his college years; friend John Lasseter remembered, "Brad would hang out all night talking about Scorsese and Coppola and how he could do what they did in animation.

[46] In the audio commentary for the home release of The Incredibles, Bird joked he would fight the next person to refer to animated movies as a "genre", as opposed to an art form.

[72] Some critics later pointed to Tomorrowland, in which a group of geniuses form a society sequestered from the rest of the world, as reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged and its Galt Gulch enclave.