One of my personal favorite writers and film directors, Wes Anderson, who directed Rushmore and Bottle Rocket and wrote The Royal Tenenbaums, has reinterpreted the Roald Dahl classic (along with Noah Baumbach), the Fantastic Mr. Fox, into a stop motion animated movie set to be released in the US on November 13th, 2009. There is to be a premiere in London in October.
Here's the first released trailer from the 20th Century Fox movie which has just been completed And later in this post are over 30 amazing stills from the movie.
The voice cast includes Willem Dafoe, Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Anjelica Huston, Brian Cox, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, and Bill Murray, who is perfect as a lovable badger in a suit. Even Chef Mario Batali voices the Rabbit.
A synopsis of the film from IMDB:
"Boggis and Bunce and Bean, One short, one fat, one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were nonetheless equally mean."
Mr. Fox, Mrs. Fox, and all their fox babies live under a hill under a tree, along with Badger, Rabbit, Weasel, and all of their families. To make ends meet, every night, Mr. Fox steals a meal from one of the three crooked farmers--Boggis, a chicken farmer, Bunce, who has a little bit of everything but only eats duck liver, and Bean, who farms turkeys and apples and subsists solely on apple cider. With his keen sense of smell, and the farmers' distinctive diets, Mr. Fox has no problem evading them.
After so much treatment, the greedy farmers band together to end Mr. Fox. They ambush him at the base of his hole in the hill, and while Mr. Fox survives, his tail does not. Thus begins an obsession on the part of the farmers. They first try to dig the foxes out, but they are outdug by eight sets of paws. Then, they move to starving them out. This is unfortunate, as no other creatures living under the hill (though now more of a valley; a bulldozer was involved at one point) can get out, either. Mr. Fox is not a very popular figure until he chances across the idea of digging under the farmhouses...
I've got a bunch a wonderful brand spankin new stills for you:
All images are © 2009 20th Century Fox and courtesy of The Rushmore Academy
The official site has a great gallery that includes a lot of behind the scene images like these:
so, be sure to check that out here.
A foxtail necktie handed out at Comic-Con 2009 to promote The Fantastic Mr. Fox.:
© IMDb staff photo
The official The Fantastic Mr. Fox movie site.
For those of you with children, a new version of the classic book has been released with images from the movie. You can pre-order it now.
Or, if you prefer, you can choose from classic editions of Fantastic Mr. Fox books and audio tapes
here.