- Notes provided by Fox Searchlight.-

FANTASTIC MR. FOX is visionary director Wes Anderson's first animated film, utilizing classic handmade stop-motion techniques to tell the story of the best-selling children's book by Roald Dahl (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach). The film features the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Wally Wolodarsky, Eric Anderson, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, and Jarvis Cocker.

Mr. and Mrs. Fox (Clooney and Streep) live an idyllic home life with their son Ash (Schwartzman) and visiting young nephew Kristofferson (Eric Anderson). But after twelve years of quiet domesticity, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr. Fox's wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but the whole animal community. Trapped underground without enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight against the evil Farmers - Boggis, Bunce and Bean - who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic Mr. Fox at any cost. In the end, he uses his natural instincts to save his family and friends.

Twentieth Century Fox presents, in association with Indian Paintbrush and Regency Enterprises, an American Empirical Picture, FANTASTIC MR. FOX. Directed by Wes Anderson and written for the screen by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, the film is based on the book by Roald Dahl. The film is produced by Allison Abbate, Scott Rudin, Wes Anderson and Jeremy Dawson with Steven Rales and Arnon Milchan as executive producers.

The production team includes animation director Mark Gustafson, director of photography Tristan Oliver, production designer Nelson Lowry, music composed and conducted by Alexandre Desplat, supervising editor Andrew Weisblum, music supervisor Randall Poster and puppets fabricated by MacKinnon and Saunders.

ORIGINS

First published in 1970 by Alfred Knopf in the US and George Allen & Unwin in the UK, with illustrations by Donald Chaffin, Roald Dahl's beloved book Fantastic Mr. Fox has enchanted and delighted generations of children and their parents alike for almost 40 years. Now, thanks to the bittersweet, wryly funny vision of acclaimed filmmaker Wes Anderson (RUSHMORE, THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS, THE DARJEELING LIMITED) and the magic of stop-motion animation, Dahl's darkly humorous tale of the noble, charming and fantastic Mr. Fox is set to enthrall and delight an even wider audience.

Anderson first read Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox as a child growing up in Houston, Texas and was captivated by it. "It was not only the first Roald Dahl book I ever read, it was the first book I ever owned," he says. "I loved the character of Mr. Fox, this sort of heroic and slightly vain animal. And I also loved the digging. My brothers and I were obsessed with being underground and with tunnels and forts. He's a wonderful writer and his personality comes through in the writing so forcefully."

Although Roald Dahl died in 1990, his work remains as influential and popular as ever, with many of his celebrated children's books having been adapted for the big screen, among them Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (which was the source of both the 1972 feature, WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, and the 2005 film starring Johnny Depp), James And The Giant Peach, Matilda, and The Witches, with several others in various stages of development.

Anderson optioned the movie rights to Fantastic Mr. Fox from Dahl's widow Felicity "Liccy" Dahl, who runs the late author's literary estate. "My film agent in Los Angeles approached me nine years ago, saying, 'I've had an enquiry from somebody called Wes Anderson, who wants to make a film of Fantastic Mr. Fox'," Dahl recalls. "In my ignorance, I hadn't heard of Wes Anderson then and he'd just made RUSHMORE and BOTTLE ROCKET. Michael sent me the videos and I looked at them and I thought, this guy has got talent. He was very young then and it wasn't until about three years later that we met in New York. He asked me to have lunch with him. He took me to a very posh restaurant and he was sitting, waiting for me when I walked in, and he stood up and he immediately looked like Mr. Fox, beautifully dressed, immaculate, and I said 'Gosh, Wes, what are we doing here?' And he said the cheese soufflé's fantastic. He was in the middle of getting THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS together and we chatted and I thought, yes, this is the guy to make this film."

Before he began work on the script, Anderson visited Gipsy House, the Dahl family's estate in Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, England, where the late author famously worked in a writing hut in the garden.

"He came to Gipsy House and we spent a very wet muddy day walking all over the hills, the woods, the dales, everywhere and we had good fun," Felicity Dahl continues.

"I went to Gipsy House in March, and it was drenched in mud," Anderson says. "Liccy gave me a pair of rubber boots and one of Dahl's old fishing hats and took me around the property. There is a gigantic beech tree at the end of a fox run, which I immediately recognized from Fantastic Mr. Fox. There is a painted gypsy caravan under a tree, which I had seen in dust-jacket photographs. There is a stone half buried on the edge of the drive with the word 'gipsy' carved into it.

"Liccy showed me into Dahl's famous writing hut," Anderson continues. "There is part of a bone from his hip on the table next to his first metal hip replacement, which didn't take. There is a 10-pound ball of aluminum foil made from several years of Cadbury chocolate wrappers. There is a little surgical valve he invented that saved his son from hydrocephalus (a.k.a. water on the brain). That night Liccy left me to examine Dahl's manuscripts in an office next to the guesthouse. An archivist made me wash my hands twice with special soap and told me to close all the curtains and lock the door when I was finished. I was alone with dozens of handwritten drafts with Dahl's sketches in the margins, and I could see his whole process laid out in front of me. More than ever, I felt as if I were in his presence."

During the visit, Anderson asked Dahl if he and his frequent writing partner, Noah Baumbach (THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE), could come and stay at Gipsy House to write the script. "He said, 'I think I'll feel the atmosphere and everything much better,'" Felicity Dahl recalls. "I said, I'd be delighted. So a few months later he and Noah moved into our spare bedrooms in the annex and stayed here for two weeks and they wrote the screenplay upstairs in one of the bedrooms and we fed and wined them royally and it was terrific fun, we had an amazing time. And off he went when the screenplay was finished and eventually sent me a copy. I read it that night and gave it to my grandson Luke to read the next day and he said, 'This is fantastic, you've got to do it', and so that was that."

"I think he felt inspired by being there," says producer Allison Abbate (IRON GIANT, CORPSE BRIDE) of Anderson's time at Gipsy House, "and if you ever go there, it is very inspiring. Just the legacy of Roald Dahl, the writing hut, and the countryside around it, were a huge part of the vision for how to create this film. There are lots of fun bits within the movie that are based on that area and their house."

"Gipsy House influenced him enormously," agrees Felicity Dahl. "I think he felt close to Roald here, and we have all the archives of every book Roald wrote. Every draft of every book is in the archives in the museum in the village and so he was able to look at early drafts of the book and also the most enchanting notebook Roald illustrated himself, he had the foxes pushing supermarket trolleys in it, and all those things moved him greatly, I think."

"Dahl was a very interesting man with many colors," notes Anderson. "We spent time at his house when we were writing and a lot of the details of his life found their way into our story and into the character of Mr. Fox. Dahl probably wrote Mr. Fox to be an animal version of himself, and so when we were writing it, without ever putting it into words, that was intuitively what we were doing."

"I think Roald would quite like to think of himself as Fantastic Mr. Fox," muses Felicity Dahl. "He loved helping people, particularly the underdog, but also because of the many medical tragedies that the family had been through, and he hated injustice. So yes, I think he would have liked to have been Mr. Fox, and he was in a certain way."

Inevitably, to turn Dahl's slim children's story into a film required changes. "Not enough happens to make a feature-length movie," Anderson explains, "so we knew we had to invent a lot. But as we did it, all we wanted to do was to try and write something that we hoped Roald Dahl would think was suitable and fit with what he has invented in the first place. We were trying to write a Roald Dahl movie. I mean, we're not going to think up the same jokes that Roald Dahl would, and we're bringing our own personalities to it. But our goal was to try and do a Roald Dahl story."

While Anderson and Baumbach retained the core of the tale, they expanded the story to include not only new scenes, but new characters. "His adaptation is pretty organic to the story," insists Abbate who feels all the additions adhere to the tone and the spirit of Dahl's original material. "And the new characters feel organic, too."

"It's not so much a beat for beat adaptation as it is an adaptation through the mind of a different writer," says producer Jeremy Dawson. "That being said, almost any line that is in the book, of a character speaking, pretty much ends up in our story. We even tried to use [Dahl's] chapter headings, like: 'Mr. Fox has a plan'."

"A lot of changes have been made because it's a small book, so it had to be embroidered," muses Felicity Dahl, "and I think Roald would have approved a great deal of what Wes and Noah wrote in order to make it a full-length feature. I think it's sad that Wes never met Roald because I think they would have got on very well. But maybe it was better that Wes didn't meet Roald because he met him through the book, through his passion for the book."

In Anderson's FANTASTIC MR. FOX, Mr. Fox, voiced by George Clooney (MICHAEL CLAYTON, OCEAN'S 11), is a former bird thief turned newspaper columnist who, against the advice of his lawyer, Badger (Bill Murray), moves his family into an expensive beech tree near three farms belonging to farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean. "The tree that he lives in is like a haughty midlife crisis decision," explains Abbate. "It's dangerous and it's above his means."

Needless to say, the temptation of living so close to the farms is too great for Mr. Fox to resist, and soon he's back to his old ways. Together with his opossum pal Kylie and sporty nephew Kristofferson, Mr. Fox is soon raiding the three farms for chickens, geese, turkeys and cider, putting himself on a collision course with the farmers who vow to rid themselves of this furry menace by any means necessary.

In Dahl's story, Mr. Fox has four unnamed cubs. "They're just sort of referred to, essentially," says Anderson who, together with Baumbach, decided to reduce that number to one, but flesh out the character with a back story and a substantial role in the overall narrative. And so Mr. Fox now has a son called Ash, a geeky misfit and comic book obsessive who doesn't relate to his father.

"He doesn't really know who he is and wants his father's love and approval," says long-time Anderson friend and collaborator Jason Schwartzman (RUSHMORE, FUNNY PEOPLE), who voices Ash. "I want to be a great athlete like my dad, and I want to be smart like him. I want recognition. My character's whole story line is coming to terms with who he is. And I think that's what the movie's about. It's being okay with who you are. And the thing that makes you different is the thing that makes you special. In the end, it turns out that my smallness and my differences save some lives."

"Wes wanted to try and build on the kid characters so there's another generation of foxes," explains Dawson of the introduction of Ash and his cousin Kristofferson. "And that creates a family dynamic."

"It's a family dynamic, or, more accurately, a dysfunctional family dynamic that we can recognize from Anderson's previous films. The story and the way it unfolds, the way he composes a shot and paces a sequence; they are all very Wes Anderson," notes Abbate.

"What I love about the movie is that Wes didn't change his style of directing and storytelling to fit the animated genre," agrees Schwartzman. "He just brought the genre to him and made his own movie as if it was another Wes Anderson film, which it is."

One quintessential Anderson addition to the story is whack-bat, an entirely new sport that's an amalgam of cricket, rounders and baseball and which is played by Ash and his cousin. "People were liking the kids characters," reveals Dawson of whack-bat's genesis, "and we thought, Let's try and expand them a little bit, add a few more scenes where the kids are not with the family, and Wes came up with this. Once he'd written the scene, we retroactively decided what the game would look like and how we'd play it."

The rules of the game are outlined in a hilarious sequence by Ash's Coach Skip, a ferret voiced by Anderson's long-time friend and collaborator Owen Wilson (MARLEY & ME). "It has lots of ridiculously complicated rules and lots of physical funny activity," laughs Abbate. "Symbolically it is about Ash trying to get his father's attention. Mr. Fox was an amazing athlete, and won all the trophies in whack-bat, and so Ash failing or succeeding at the game means a lot to him, and plays into the ending of the film a little bit."

STOP-MOTION

First seen in Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton's 1898 film THE HUMPTY DUMPTY CIRCUS, stop-motion animation is one of the oldest forms of special effects, and the meticulous, labor-intensive process hasn't changed much since its introduction more than a century ago. The technique involves the frame-by-frame manipulation of a three-dimensional object - a puppet, a model or even an actor - to bring it to life and make it appear to move. Typically there are 24 frames of film per second of screen time, and so the object's body, head, arms, legs, hands, fingers, eyes, ears, and mouth must be moved in infinitesimally small increments between frames, which, when the film is projected, creates the illusion of movement.

"I've always loved stop-motion," says Anderson, who had previously included several stop-motion sequences in his 2004 feature THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, sequences that were directed by stop-motion superstar Henry Selick (CORALINE). "But the thing I've always loved with stop-motion, more than anything else, is puppets that have fur."

"One of the things Wes likes about stop-motion is that there's a magic to it," says Dawson. "He likes that it's handmade, and there's a craft to it. He's not a big fan of computer imagery, per se, because he likes process. The aesthetic of stop-motion lets you use lots of textures and crafted little things, and all his movies are so designed and executed and every detail is thought out. So it's sort of a perfect medium in that case."

From the original KING KONG in 1933 to George Lucas' STAR WARS, this painstaking art has been responsible for many of cinema's classic moments, thanks in no small part to the work of early exponents such as Willis O'Brien (KING KONG, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG) and his young protégé Ray Harryhausen (JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD) whose name became synonymous with the medium.

Although stop-motion or stop-frame animation was still used as a visual effects technique in Hollywood up until the early '90s, the advent of computer-generated imagery had effectively reduced its use to television shows, commercials, short films and music videos. Then, in 1993, TIM BURTON'S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS paved the way for audiences, and for Hollywood, to see stop-motion animation in a new light, resulting in movies such as Selick's own Roald Dahl adaptation JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, Nick Park's CHICKEN RUN and WALLACE & GROMIT IN THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT, Burton's CORPSE BRIDE and Selick's recent CORALINE.

While the fundamentals of stop-motion have remained the same for more than a hundred years, improvements in puppet technology, the use of digital still cameras instead of film, as well as the introduction of computers, video assists, and the ability to remove rigs that hold puppets in place for previously impossible shots in post-production, have all helped make animation slicker than ever before. By contrast, for FANTASTIC MR. FOX, Anderson was interested in returning to a form of stop-motion that was less polished, less refined, less like CGI, and which felt more old-fashioned and more handmade.

"I love the way King Kong, the old King Kong, looked, with his fur. The animators call it 'boiling'. And for some reason the whole magical aspect of stop-motion was one of those things where you can see the trick. The Cocteau movies, the visual effects in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE), for instance, are things where you can really see that a person is behind this wall sticking their arm through, holding a torch, and the film is running backwards, and so that is how this light is coming on. Those kinds of effects where you can see what it is, have always been the most fascinating and mesmerizing to me. And with stop-motion, the whole film is that sort of thing in a way, to my mind," says Anderson.

Anderson's biggest inspiration was Russian stop-motion pioneer Ladislas Starevich's 1941 feature LE ROMAN DE RENARD (THE TALE OF THE FOX), which used puppets made from real animal skins, and which had the handmade quality he was after, as well as a crude, "herky-jerky" style of animation. "Wes was definitely not looking for a super-polished thing," notes animation director Mark Gustafson. "He wants you to feel the materials and understand how it was done. It's not slick by a long shot. No one will mistake this for CGI."

VOICE CAST

Although Anderson and Baumbach's FANTASTIC MR. FOX script retained the book's English countryside setting and its English farmers, all the animal characters are American. At the very least they're voiced by American actors. "The animals tend to have American accents and the humans are English," explains Abbate. "No one knows what accent an animal would have if it talked and animals have nationalities. We started with George Clooney as Mr. Fox and that kind of set the rule to keep them all consistent."

To play the crafty, sly and decidedly roguish antihero Mr. Fox, Anderson only ever had George Clooney in mind. "George seemed like a natural choice," he states of the producer, writer, director and Oscar®-winning actor, "because we needed somebody who was going to be a hero, and I think he is that automatically. I've wanted to work with him for a long time. So we sent him the script, and he said he'd do it."

Adds Abbate, "George was born to play this part. He's the right combination of Cary Grant and Clark Gable. He's got the debonair, gentlemanly quality of Grant as well as the animalistic, sexy side. I really believe he could steal some chickens."

As Mr. Fox's pragmatic, artistic and resolutely faithful wife Felicity, Anderson cast multiple Academy Award® nominee and two-time Oscar® winner Meryl Streep (DOUBT). "When else am I going to be Mrs. George Clooney?" laughs Streep of accepting the role.

"There is no better actress and she completely brought to life a character," says Anderson.

"She was an amazing choice," says Abbate. "She's the moral center of the movie in many ways. She can be strong, she can be funny, and she is definitely wifely. She stands by her man and helps him get out of scrapes. She's got a great relationship with Mr. Fox. She keeps him honest."

"She's the one person he can't lie to," muses Bill Murray, who voices Mr. Fox's lawyer Badger and previously lent his voice to Garfield the cat for GARFIELD and GARFIELD: A TAIL OF TWO KITTIES. "I mean, he can sort of try to deceive her but she knows who he is. She is sort of a magical creature."

Murray, who previously worked with Anderson on RUSHMORE, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, originally wanted to give his character a Wisconsin accent. "Because the badger is the mascot of the University of Wisconsin and it's badger country," says the actor. "I worked on my accent very hard. I did the first few scenes with [it], and I was feeling really pleased." Alas, Anderson wasn't so keen. "He said, I see him as sort of a Saville Row-lawyer kind of a badger, which is fair enough - and it's worked out great."

Producer Abbate agrees. "Bill Murray took a part that was originally very small and made it something really funny," she says. "He has so much personality he anchors the movie right from the very start."

Filling out the rest of the voice cast were many who had worked with Anderson before, and who form part of his unofficial company of actors, including Jason Schwartzman as Ash, Owen Wilson (THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS) as Coach Skip, Willem Dafoe (SPIDERMAN, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU) as the villainous Rat, Brian Cox (RUSHMORE) as a TV reporter, Academy Award® winner Adrien Brody (THE PIANIST, THE DARJEELING LIMITED) in a brief cameo as Rickety the mouse, and Wally Wolodarsky, who played the assistant in THE DARJEELING LIMITED, as Kylie the opossum. Even executive producer Dawson was roped in. "Wes likes to use a lot of his friends and family," Abbate reveals. "Jeremy's the voice of the Beaver's son. His live action prop master is the Mole." Anderson's younger brother, Eric, who worked as an illustrator on the film, was enlisted to play Ash's cousin Kristofferson. "I think he is really a revelation," says Murray of Eric Anderson.

As Franklin Bean, the meanest and most ruthless of the three farmers, Anderson cast acclaimed British actor Michael Gambon (HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE). "I think Michael is perfect casting for Mr. Bean," says Murray who starred alongside him in THE LIFE AQUATIC. "You don't really see that dark side of Michael much, although he's got a lot of power."

When it came to finding someone to voice Rabbit, Anderson called upon internationally renowned chef Mario Batali. "It's a small part but it's a chef," says Abbate, "and so Wes thought he'd go to his favorite American one." Meanwhile, pop musician and former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker not only voices banjo-playing Bean farmhand Petey (who looks very much like Jarvis), but sings a song too, the inventively titled "Petey's Song", which he co-wrote with Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach.

Anderson himself plays the character of Weasel, the real estate agent who sells Mr. Fox the beech tree at the beginning. "He's really funny," says Abbate.

Typically, the dialogue for animated films is recorded in a studio in advance. Anderson adopted a much more organic approach to recording the voice track for FANTASTIC MR. FOX and spent a few days on a farm in Connecticut with Clooney, Murray, Schwartzman and Wally Wolodarsky recording the dialogue "as live", with the performers acting out the scenes as they would a radio play. If there was a scene set in a field, the cast would run around a field with the boom operator chasing after them. Scenes in the cider cellar were recorded in a basement. For those in a barn, they went into a barn.

"We recorded the voices in kind of an unconventional way," Anderson recalls. "George was happy to do that which I really appreciated. I thought it would be nice if we could have our cast together and try and make it a fun experience recording the voices, and that it might be nice if it sounded like when you were outside, that you were really outside -- if we just did it for real. If we're going to record by a river, we'll go over by the river and if we're meant to be in an underground tunnel, we'll do it in somebody's basement. And that was the way we recorded it. And it was fun."

"The dream was to have the cast run around and act out these scenes," recalls Schwartzman, "so you could get people out of breath, overlapping each other, things that happen in real movies that you tend not to see in animated films because things are done so separately. And so if the foxes are digging a hole, Wes got us on the ground and actually had us digging in the ground."

PRODUCTON DESIGN:
SETS AND COSTUMES

When it comes to the look of his films, Wes Anderson takes a complete hands-on approach to art direction and design; the result is amazing, inimitable confections of meticulously crafted nostalgia and intricate set dressing. FANTASTIC MR. FOX is no exception.

"The thing about Wes, he is a visionary and has a very clear and precise vision," says Abbate. "He's very detail orientated. He has input into every character design, every prop design. Everything in the movie has his mark on it."

Inspiration, it seems, can strike Anderson anywhere, anytime. The look of one background farm worker was based on a 17th century oil painting Anderson saw in a restaurant in Germany. "We were on the way to Prague and Wes saw a painting in the back," Dawson recalls. "We took pictures and that was the inspiration for the design of Earl Malloy."

"He likes to curate elements out of his experience, and has a mind that's really good at doing that," continues Dawson who says the design of Mrs. Bean's kitchen was inspired by the tiles in a Parisian bakery near Anderson's home, as well as the dining room at St. John's restaurant in Smithfield, London. "Anything that catches his eye he wants to use."

"Wes is very reference-based," notes production designer Nelson Lowry whose stop-motion credits include CORPSE BRIDE and who found Anderson's method a refreshing change of pace. "He likes to draw from everyday reference and that's really a bit of a departure for stop-frame because in stop-frame you can do anything. You don't often draw from real-life reference. You make stuff up. We all draw upon our environment. It's just Wes is more aware and purposeful when he does it. He scans over his world and picks a seemingly random pattern of influences that when you pull them together are very Wes Anderson."

While working with a director with such a specific vision might have fazed some designers, Lowry says he found it rather liberating. "It's the opposite of what you're usually faced with, a director who doesn't know what they want. Wes knows what he wants. He knows what spoon he wants. Or if he doesn't, he knows what spoon he doesn't want."

Lowry began work on FANTASTIC MR. FOX by studying all of Anderson's previous films, looking for points of similarity, design-wise. "The Wes code is pretty tough to crack," he reveals. "I went through every film he made, took stills of them, put them up on my office walls, hundreds of them, and I started to look for things that are common, aside from the framing which is terribly important. I started noticing color combinations, textures and patterns that were in similar places in the frame. Once I started to understand that, I could look for similar items or references based on those. It took a good three, four months to see that pattern emerge. But it was fun. It was like a puzzle to solve."

With a team of around a dozen illustrators, some working exclusively on character designs, others on sets, Lowry began to build the world of FANTASTIC MR. FOX, starting with Mr. Fox himself. "The environments really had to follow the lead of the character design because they have to meld so completely," Lowry explains, "so we really didn't do too much until we had a good idea of what Mr. Fox looked like. And what the farmers looked like."

Anderson wanted his animal characters to be more human than animal. He wanted them to walk upright, wear tailored clothes and have human-like proportions.

"He was thinking about human actors, basically," Lowry says. "You could tell he was always trying to drive the design into what he saw was a human actor, so they are very anthropomorphised. Mr. Fox's proportions went from being very animal-like to having square shoulders, human-like proportions."

"Initially when he was sculpted and designed, he was very much like an animal," says animation supervisor Mark Waring of Mr. Fox. "He had the back legs that bent and he had a slightly hunched animal pose, and gradually he was straightened out and became more and more human."

Again, Starevich's LE ROMAN DE RENARD was a major influence on the look of the animal characters. "Wes was inspired by the rough, kind of crazy construction of the characters in that film," Lowry explains. "They had a very creepy sort of realism to them, and we tried to get some of that into the designs. So they're naturalistic and yet still stylised but not as, say, in a typical film where you would see very cute versions of these animals. They remain a bit sophisticated and adult looking."

The production designer also took inspiration from Victorian photographs of animals dressed in clothes. "Little kittens having tea parties, things like that. It's so wrong yet it's very compelling," he says. "So there's a bit of that in the character design as well."

For helping nail down the look of Mr. Fox and the other characters, Lowry acknowledges the contribution of Felicie Haymoz, a young Belgium illustrator. "She's only in her early 20s and was critical to the design," he reflects. "She had a very specific, detailed way of drawing that Wes responded to and she could turn several designs over and over again to get exactly what he wanted, and would do four or five variations. As a director and as a designer, because I think he's both, Wes loves to work from a menu, so we would provide him with many versions of the same drawing and he would choose the one he liked."

Lowry also tracked down Donald Chaffin, who'd illustrated the first edition of Fantastic Mr. Fox, and brought him onboard as part of the film's design team. "From what I understand Chaffin's book was quite an inspiration for Wes when he was a child, and those drawings really stuck in his head," Lowry says.

Once the character designs were locked down, Lowry turned his attentions to the film's various environments. Together with Abbate and Gustafson, he visited several chicken, turkey and squab farms across the UK. "Wes didn't want them to be a fairy tale, storybook kind of farm, all cute and quaint," says Abbate of the look Anderson was after for Boggis, Bunce and Bean's farms. "He wanted them to be real, with rusty, corrugated metal, bits of machinery and farm stuff that was authentic."

The biggest influence on the look of the film, however, came from Dahl himself, his estate in Great Missenden, and the surrounding landscape. Not only does Bean physically resemble Roald Dahl, Bean's house is based on the Gipsy House façade, with its big yellow door and whitewashed brick walls, while the kitchen provided the inspiration for Mr. and Mrs. Fox's kitchen. Mr. Fox's study, meanwhile, is a perfect miniature recreation of Dahl's famous garden writing hut, right down to his upholstered chair, mug, and the tinfoil ball made from old Kit Kat wrappers that Dahl kept on his desk.

"It's really a nice nod to Roald Dahl," says the production designer, "to carry that mythology of the Dahl world into the film."

"Farmer Bean has a little bit of Dahl in him," says producer Dawson. "So does Bean's house which looks very similar to Gipsy House. Partly as an homage. Partly because the stuff looks good. Also, it's fun."

Mr. Fox's beech tree, too, was based on one, now fallen, that was just up the road from Gipsy House called the Witches Tree. "On the cover of that book there is a tree, so I said to Wes, the real tree exists, it's a big beech tree, and it's just a little way up the lane from Gipsy House. And when Wes came here, the first thing he wanted to see was the beech tree which was amazing because about a year later, sadly, this 150-year-old tree fell. It just collapsed and is now horizontal rather than vertical and covered in brambles. It was sad, but, of course, in the film the tree is a very big feature, as indeed it is in the book."

Lowry reveals exactly how much that tree is in the film. "When I was there I took some of the bark and made a press mould. So some of the bark on Mr. Fox's tree in the set has some of the impression of that original tree."

Unlike live-action movies, stop-motion animation requires everything that goes before the camera to be created. Every character, every set, every prop, every item of clothing has to be handcrafted before a single frame of film can even be shot. From miniature magazines, to a mini iMac, to a supermarket full of food, everything is built from scratch. "You can't go to a prop house and buy anything," says Lowry, "so we had to make sure that everything we made, thousands of things, hundreds of different environments, all had something of Wes and his filmmaking in them."

Lowry estimates his team made in the region of 4000 props and up to 150 different sets. "It was a huge build," he says. "We had around 50 people in the workshop, from carpenters to painters to mold makers, research people, runners. And we really did shoot most of the stuff we made, which is rare. Another thing about Wes is he doesn't forget anything. So if something wasn't used and was cut from the film, later he would say, 'Remember that table or this set we didn't use, maybe we can use it here.'"

Sets measured up to 30-40 feet across, particularly with the huge, countryside vistas required by the script. In that regard Lowry says he was aided by the use of different size puppets, some as small as a centimeter high, which allowed the building of scaled-down sets that would have been too prohibitively expensive to have been built to full size. "It afforded us to do much more epic landscapes, because all we had to do was switch to the smaller characters. For instance, Bean's annex, the area outside his farm, there's a shootout with the characters. We built a fairly large set, 25 feet long and 15 feet deep, it was in half scale, with half scale humans and micro animals, and immediately it looked like it was a 40-foot set. So it was a way for us to economically and physically do larger sets. But, those landscapes were such a challenge."

Particularly when one of Anderson's stipulations was that there be no green in the film. "The color palette is noteworthy because it was initially so restrictive," Lowry recalls. "It's all mustards and yellows and reds and beiges. It was very odd going into it because we had to represent a lot of different things that would be not in that color range, but in the end we found a pretty good formula, so things that would be green ended up being beige or ochre. Having said, there are a lot of other colors in the film, but he drove us in that way to such an extent that the film looks very autumnal. It really glows.

"It's a very storybook, made up, strange world," Lowry continues, proud of what his team achieved. "I think it's quite charming. Again the level of detail enhances the experience of looking at it. There's so much to see it in. It's profoundly unique. It doesn't remind me of anything, except maybe a Wes Anderson movie. There's also a bit of oddness, but it's an accessible oddness. It's what gives the movie charm. It is intense in a way. It's a singular vision and anything that's a singular vision is powerful."

PUPPETS

To flesh out Lowry's team's character designs into fully realized three-dimensional creations, the production approached acclaimed puppet makers Ian MacKinnon and Peter Saunders whose credits include CORPSE BRIDE as well as countless television shows and commercials. Based in Manchester, England, MacKinnon and Saunders were charged with creating a series of puppets in what is termed "hero scale", which is the standard puppet size used by stop-motion animators because of its versatility of movement and ability to handle the largest variety of facial expressions. Ranging in size from a couple of inches (in the case of Rickety the mouse), up to eighteen inches (for Rat), these "hero scale" puppets were sculpted over armatures - movable metal skeletons made typically from steel or aluminium with ball and socket joints - that allow the animators to position them as required.

Once MacKinnon and Saunders had completed their work, this first batch of puppets became the subject of further design changes as Anderson and the animators then set about refining and, in some cases, redesigning the characters based on their look or animatability.

"It's still evolving heavily at that point," says puppet fabrication supervisor Andy Gent, who worked on CORPSE BRIDE and CORALINE. "We had to change the shapes on the puppets, on the shoulders and some of their profiles, and then redo the costumes because none of the costumes would work. So there was an awful lot of redesigning and finding new materials."

Unlike most stop-motion puppets which are normally made from silicon or plasticine over a ball and socket armature, a large number of the characters in FANTASTIC MR. FOX, by virtue of being animals, needed to be covered in fur.

As with props, every item of clothing for the puppets had to be manufactured to Anderson's precise instructions. The corduroy and tweed suits worn by Mr. Fox were based on suits that Anderson wears himself. "We got swatch samples from his tailor so we could match the color," Abbate reveals.

Mrs. Fox's dress took a little more time to get right. "Unlike most animated movies where you sketch the characters and the dress would be part of the sculpt, here Wes designed the clothes like you would for an actress or a model," recalls Abbate. "But the first dress we made didn't look that great on her. It was fine as a drawing but it didn't work with the puppet's hips, shoulders and torso, and so the puppet costumers had to become like costume designers and go, how can we fit this dress on her? She's Meryl Streep after all. She needs something beautiful."

For Rat, Anderson wanted a striped, knitted sweater. A simple enough request you might think, except someone not only has to actually knit it, but has to knit it with knitting needles of an appropriate size.

"You have to make the knitting needles to start with before you can actually fabricate the material you're going to make the sweater out of," notes Gent of the immense amount of worked involved in bringing FANTASTIC MR. FOX to life. "We made a tiny little badge for the jumper which went through a few versions, but in the end Wes was absolutely keen to get a hand-embroidered badge where the letters were two-and-a-half millimeters high. It's that incredible detail that gives us all the richness. So there's an awful lot of work to get to that stage."

Once Anderson and the animators signed off on the "hero scale" puppets, Gent's team then moved on to making smaller versions of each character in a variety of scales. In addition to "hero scale", puppets were made in three sizes, "half scale", "mini" and "micro-mini", with the latter only 12-20 millimetres in height. "The small ones were the revelation," says Abbate. "They rocked our world a little bit."

"They've been able to give us the really big wide scenes where we couldn't have physically built a set that big, as it would take up the entire studio," Gent explains. "We built really small versions, gave them enough to keep them alive, wire arms and legs. Because we couldn't give them mechanics, which we did on the other scales, they had a certain charm of their own which Wes really liked."

Initially, Gent says, the "minis" and "micro-minis" were intended simply for wide shots but soon Anderson wanted to use them more and more, and use them closer and closer to camera, which meant redesigning them. "When we first looked at the small scale Mr. Fox, the brief was something with cardboard box bodies, very angular heads and little wire arms and legs, so they looked like they were toys," he explains. "We tested them and they looked fantastic but it was quite a jolt from the hero-scale character to that look. We went through two or three versions until we arrived at something which you knew was Mr. Fox, but you knew it was a slightly smaller version. Obviously it couldn't move its eyes, open and close its mouth, it's not furred, it's sculptured, so it has a certain amount of the look of a tin soldier, that naïveté. But when you see it in the context of the set, it has a really nice charm to it."

With four main scales of puppets, countless costume changes and 18 different looks for Mr. Fox alone, Gent estimates his team made in the region of 500 puppets in total, about 150 of them "hero scale". It was, he admits, a massive undertaking, but it was only part of their job.

Throughout the year-long shoot, Gent's team, which, at its peak, numbered 25, also had to service, repair and maintain all the puppets, operating out of a workshop that was dubbed "the puppet hospital" by the production and was a favorite destination for people visiting the set.

It was, inevitably, the micro and micro-minis that took most punishment. "Some only lasted one or two shots," Gent explains. "The hero scale ones pretty much last the whole show and all we did was replace skins when they got torn. Some we can't repair beyond a certain point, so they just had fresh faces, fresh fingers, but their actual costumes and bodies lasted from start to finish."

ANIMATION PROCESS

Principal photography on FANTASTIC MR. FOX began on June 9, 2008 at Three Mills Studios in East London, a week later than planned after an unexploded Second World War bomb was discovered in a nearby river, forcing the studio and surrounding properties to be evacuated for several days.

Once all the puppets were completed, they were turned over to an international crew of 30 animators who then spent the next year making these puppets act, under the close guidance of Anderson, animation director Mark Gustafson and animation supervisor Mark Waring.

For the animators working on FANTASTIC MR. FOX, many of them veterans of CORPSE BRIDE and CORALINE, the biggest challenge was the material that covered the majority of the puppets. "It's a furry film," says director of photography Tristan Oliver with only a modicum of understatement. "That gives a whole new range of problems because fur doesn't really behave itself in stop-frame - it flutters and jitters."

That jittery movement is referred to as the "boil" by animators. But rather than try to eradicate the effect - which would have been time-consuming and difficult, although not impossible - Anderson was keen to embrace the imperfection. Yet another influence of stop-motion animated films such as PETER AND THE WOLF, LE ROMAN DE RENARD and the original KING KONG, the latter a particular favorite of the filmmaker's. "I remember loving the original KING KONG and seeing the way the fur moves," Anderson insists. "The fur just kind of ripples along all of them, and I always liked that, I don't know why."

Working out the best way for the fur to "boil", but not so much that it became distracting, was trial and error. "We found if you didn't move the fur, it froze and looked a bit odd," reveals animation supervisor Waring. In the end, trying not to move the fur was the key. "By being careful, and using cocktail sticks and sculpting tools and very minimal contact with the fur, [that] gave enough movement to it. Or else you'd blow on it or just touch it slightly, every now and again. The puppet department also put hair products into the fur, gels and hairspray, to try and stabilize it, so you could style it and tease it to get the look you wanted."

Anderson's desire for a rougher, choppier style of animation was somewhat easier to achieve. "You can animate a character 24 times to get a second's worth of animation but if you do it 12 times and do each frame twice, it'll only be 12 movements rather than 24," explains Waring of the process known as "twos" which was used for certain scenes. "It gives a slightly different style. It's not that noticeable, but it's slightly choppier."

In terms of animating Mr. Fox himself, Waring says character was key to his movements - that and thinking of him as human. "Mr. Fox is a bit of an antihero," explains Waring. "He's quite sly. He's not a good parent. He doesn't look after his son very well. Also he lies to his wife. When you come to animate, you have to have that in your mind, to try and express that inner emotion. You're trying to make the audience believe he's shifty, so he moves quickly. And when he's eating his breakfast there's the element of the wild animal still in him, so he goes crazy while eating. But most of it is played out as if they're humans rather than an animal look. That came through in the other characters as well, they became more human-based."

Another major challenge faced by the animators was Anderson's insistence that the puppets shouldn't blink, a decision that, at first, caused some anxiety. "For keeping a puppet alive, the eyes are a fantastic thing," says Gent. "You can have a puppet stand still but if its eyes blink every now and then, that's a very good way of keeping everybody glued to it. Not blinking changes that dynamic for obvious reasons but we were able to do special sets of eyeballs for the hero scale puppets when we went in for close ups. We spent a lot of time finessing the irises to get that richness of light and to give them as much of a watery, realistic look as possible."

Part of Anderson's desire to avoid puppets blinking was to do with his aesthetic approach to FANTASTIC MR. FOX. Unlike traditional stop-motion movies with their sweeping camera moves and multitude of close-ups, Anderson decided to shoot FANTASTIC MR. FOX as he would one of his live-action films. And so, the animators were schooled in the ways of Anderson, watching his previous movies as research to pick up tips about his use of very formal framing; his fondness for symmetry within the frame and for characters to be in the centre frame and often talking directly to camera; his playing out of scenes in mostly masters; and his use of long, slow tracking shoots - as well as how he worked with his actors.

"There are a lot of decisions that are definitely molded by his live-action background," says animation director Mark Gustafson. "He likes to play master shots. In close ups, he wants very little going on. When he does do a close up, he'll do a very tight close up and he doesn't want blinking and it's really a challenge because with an actor like Bill Murray there's a whole lot going on in the face, there's not much movement but there's all kinds of soul. You get in on a puppet and it's not there unless you find a way to put it there, and the best animators can make a really tight close up work on a puppet that has got a layer of fur on top of this latex or silicon, and these mechanics inside that you're just shoving around with your thumb. The best of the shots I look at and go, 'Wow, how in the world did that animator manage to get that out of a tiny little area, with fingers and thumbs and sticks?'"

One particular tracking shot, lasting a minute-and-a-half of screen time, was so complicated it took Waring, from preparation to shooting, more than three months to finish and involved around nine weeks of actual animation.

"It was quite an involved thing which involved nearly all the characters at some point in the shot," he reveals. "It started with Mole playing the piano, went through across the flint mine table where they're preparing for the banquet, so all the characters are laying the table and some are talking, we end up in the kitchen with all the kitchen melee going on and Rabbit chopping up and directing people cooking, and then continue from there to Badger and Fox walking and talking as we track along with them, and then we end up at the punchbowl where there's a whole conversation with Ash, Kristofferson and Agnes that lasts for about 45 seconds with them taking punch out of the bowl."

Waring split the sequence into three sections although it was one continuous shot. "It's the longest shot in the movie and the most complicated in terms of the amount of characters and the geography of where they are and the continuity and amount of dialogue," he notes. "I started at the end of October and finished it in February, although we stopped for the Christmas break."

While working with "hero scale" and "half scale" puppets was par for the course for the film's animators, the "micro-mini" puppets were a different proposition entirely. Small and fiddly, they required tweezers to move them and a different mindset to animate them.

"They were mainly used for broader strokes, so you would give the essence of something rather than the detail," Waring explains. "We used them mainly for the running around and the broader action which they were really good for, because you could put them on rigs or pin them. Because they had wire legs you could bend them into more extreme poses that suited bigger runs or leaps. But Wes really liked them, so eventually they were brought further forward into the frame, and we ended up using them quite close to camera for some of the sequences, which again provided a slightly different look."

"It was about finding the clever, old-fashioned way of solving a problem, so you weren't having to do big VFX fixes at the end or big VFX tasks. We still used rigs and rig removal, but we use visual effects to clean up the stuff that we do, not necessarily to make the shots," explains producer Abbate.

And so the animators went back to using what were considered to be traditional methods for creating flames and water and smoke as actual elements in camera, relying on cellophane for water, glycerine soap that was carved and sculpted into flames, and even cotton wool for smoke.

"Typically what we would do would be shoot live action elements, like live action smoke and comp them in," says director of photography Tristan Oliver. "That's not CG, that's comping, but Wes was opposed to that. We've also used a lot of pepper's ghost, an old theatre trick using a half-silvered mirror in front of the camera on which you can project an image that the camera sees as well as the scene beyond. So, for placing flames in difficult to get at areas, you can animate the flames off set, and they reflect in the glass into the appropriate part of the set."

DIRECTING

Despite his insistence on old-fashioned techniques for shooting FANTASTIC MR. FOX, it was modern technology that enabled Anderson to direct the film 24 hours a day from any location. "Doing this sort of movie, it's a long, long process and it's very detail-oriented," he reflects. "There are a million decisions, more than a live-action movie, because everything has to be made. People are making decisions not in a moment-to-moment basis but in a frame-to-frame basis and everything is just more intricate. And so half of the process of making the movie was figuring out how to make the movie, and how to manage all this information and to make sure we get onto the screen what we want to get on there, because there are 29 units going at once. That's insane. I'm accustomed to one and that's usually completely overwhelming. But we had such a great group of people and we figured out a way."

"We devised a systems of emails and sending frames and even live feeds from the animation stages to wherever he was in the world," says Abbate, "so that he could really just focus on any given stage and not be distracted by all the other activity going on. It's overwhelming having 29 or 30 'first unit' set ups and by distilling the information and getting him any reference he needed, we were able to get focused decisions on every phase of every shot."

"I would get the dailies, usually sometime between 11pm and midnight, and then I would send my notes on email to the crew in London on the various shots," Anderson remembers. "Then they would watch the dailies in the morning and review my notes and then they would write me back or call me and tell me what the game plan was. Then they would go to their sets and set to work and when there's a new shot being set up I would get emails with the images of the shots so I could respond, and we would work on the blocking and we would get the lenses right and the shots right. We'd get it all set up and refine it and go back and forth a bit. We also had this software where I could look through any of the cameras on any of the units, and so I could see what the camera was seeing on each unit through a live feed. It was very efficient."

Every scene was first storyboarded by Anderson in collaboration with a storyboard artist, and then these drawings were made into a moving storyboard known as an animatic. These animatics would then become the basis of each sequence and would allow Anderson, Gustafson and Waring to discuss blocking and framing and performance with the animator who was responsible for each one.

Additionally, Anderson shot reference videos for every sequence, which the animators would then work from alongside the animatic. The production dubbed these LAVs, for live action videos. "They would have him half-directing, half-acting out the action he would want in the scene," Abbate explains. "He'd say what he needed from each shot and then he would do it a couple of times so we could cut together a version of the shot with Wes in it. If there were multiple characters there would be multiple versions of him doing all the parts. These would give the animator the timing, basic facial expressions, and even what he wanted them to do with their hands, along with little notes on character motivation and point of view. It was a nice little package for the animators to work from."

For the animators, these LAVs were invaluable. "Any sort of inflections in a gesture, or a positioning of things, or inflections in the voice, he would act that as well as he could," says Waring. "Sometimes it was very minimal. He would play it straight to camera and there would be hardly any movement. Sometimes you had to look really hard, you'd think he's not doing anything, but the eyes were moving or there'd be a slight head move, and that was all it needed to make that shot work. The temptation as an animator is to put more gestures and expressions, but he was very much, 'No, no, no, rein it back, to keep it very much like a live action film, rather like an actor would, very minimal bits,' and that's how he played those LAVs. It's an unusual way of doing an animation film because most films are very expressive but he pulled it all back."

To that end, the filmmakers brought in Matt Kitcat and Rupert "Fish" Fishwick who developed a system called FishKat. "Anybody can gain access to the system even when they're in a foreign country. One of the things that was important with the director not always being here is that if he wants to approve the framing of a shot, you can just click on the image, send it to Wes, and he can now see that in his flat in Paris or wherever he is. If he's in post-production in London or whatever, he can just get to a computer, get in through the network and see the shot," says Kitcat. "There were 5229 shots entered for this film and 621,450 frames taken. So we were basically generating 120 gigabytes of data a day with a total storage of 18.5 terabytes."

The result is a stop-motion film that looks and feels very unique and different and yet which also stands stylistically and thematically alongside Anderson's other films. "The same tactics and storytelling tricks and tools he uses in live-action, I think he's done with animation," says Abbate. "The interesting thing is it's never done in animation and that is what makes it exciting. It feels different. Most animated films use close-ups to read the characters emotions, but Wes likes to play it from a little bit further back. It's their body language and choreography that tells you what you are supposed to think about the shot. For an animated movie that is a departure, and I think it is an interesting one."

Felicity Dahl believes that Roald would most definitely have approved. "When I was watching the finished film, I thought, He'd love this," she says. "I could feel him smiling. My breath was taken away, I have to say, when I came out of the screening. I immediately emailed Wes and I said, 'This is a masterpiece,' it's fantastic and the pace, the music. I couldn't get over the wit in it, but also the beauty. The visual side of the film is just breathtaking."

ABOUT THE CAST

GEORGE CLOONEY (Mr. Fox) has gone from actor to producer to executive producer to screenwriter to director.
The son of an anchorman, Clooney is a strong First Amendment advocate with a deep commitment to humanitarian causes.
In 2006, the same year Clooney won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for SYRIANA, he also received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and for Best Original Screenplay for GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. It was the first time in Academy history that an individual received acting and directing nominations for two different films. In addition, he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for SYRIANA and was nominated for SAG, BAFTA and Critic's Choice awards. The following year, Clooney's performance in the critically acclaimed film, MICHAEL CLAYTON earned him Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor.
Clooney's upcoming projects include THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, to be released in the fall. He stars as a former member of the U.S. Army's First Earth Battalion whose goal was to use paranormal powers to end war. The film is produced by Smokehouse, the production company Clooney formed with Grant Heslov. Smokehouse's initial production was the romantic comedy LEATHERHEADS, which Clooney also directed for Universal.
His other upcoming release includes Jason Reitman's UP IN THE AIR, for Paramount, in which he stars as a corporate downsizer.
Clooney's recent film credits include BURN AFTER READING, which reunited him for the third time with the Coen Brothers. (He also worked with them on O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?, which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and on INTOLERABLE CRUELTY. Clooney refers to the three films as "my trilogy of idiots.")
Heslov and Clooney worked together at Section Eight, a company in which Clooney was partnered with Steven Soderbergh. Section Eight productions included OCEAN'S 11, OCEAN'S 12, OCEAN'S 13, MICHAEL CLAYTON, THE GOOD GERMAN, GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK., SYRIANA, CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, THE JACKET, FULL FRONTAL and WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD.
In Section Eight's television division, Clooney was an executive producer and directed five episodes of "Unscripted," a reality-based show that debuted on HBO. He was executive producer and cameraman on "K Street," also for HBO.
Clooney made his directorial debut in 2002 with CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, for Miramax, winning the Special Achievement in Film Award from the National Board of Review.
In addition to receiving Oscar nominations for writing and directing for his second directorial project -- GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.-- he won the Paul Selvin Award from the Writers Guild of America and the Freedom Award from the Broadcast Film Critics Association. The film also earned Clooney nominations for two Golden Globes, two BAFTA's, a SAG Award™, an Independent Spirit Award, two Critic's Choice Awards, a WGA Award and a DGA Award.
In 2006 he won the American Cinematheque Award and the Modern Master Award from the Santa Barbara Film Festival.
Clooney received critical acclaim for the award-winning drama THREE KINGS (Warner Bros.) and the Oscar-nominated OUT OF SIGHT (Universal). His other film credits include SOLARIS (FOX), THE PEACEMAKER (DreamWorks), BATMAN & ROBIN (Warner Bros.), ONE FINE DAY (20th Century Fox) and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (Miramax).
He has starred in several television series, becoming best known to TV audiences for his five years on the hit NBC drama "ER." His portrayal of Dr. Douglas Ross earned him Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, People's Choice and Emmy nominations. In 2009, he returned for one final episode in which his character was reunited with his longtime love.
Clooney was executive producer and co-star of the live television broadcast of "Fail Safe," an Emmy®-winning telefilm developed through his Maysville Pictures. "Fail Safe" was nominated for a 2000 Golden Globe Award as Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television. The film was based on the early 1960s novel of the same name.
In 2006, Clooney and his father, Nick, went to Darfur to film the documentary "Journey to Darfur." His work on behalf on Darfur relief led to his addressing the United Nations Security Council. He also narrated the Darfur documentary "Sand and Sorrow."
In 2007, Clooney, along with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Jerry Weintraub, co-founded "Not On Our Watch," an organization whose mission is to focus global attention and resources to stop and prevent mass atrocities in Darfur.
Among the many honors received as a result of his humanitarian efforts in Darfur was the "2007 Peace Summit Award," given at the eighth World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates at their annual meeting in Rome. Among those presiding over the ceremonies were Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dalia Lama. In 2008, Clooney was designated a U.N. Messenger of Peace. He was one of eight individual chosen to advocate on behalf of the U.N. and its peacekeeping efforts.

MERYL STREEP (Mrs. Fox) is a two-time Academy Award winner and recipient of a record-breaking fifteen nominations.
Most recently, Streep starred as famed master chef Julia Child in Nora Ephron's JULIE & JULIA. Last year she starred in John Patrick Shanley's acclaimed film of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play DOUBT, for which she won the Screen Actors Guild award® and the Critic's Choice award. In addition, she received nominations for an Oscar, a BAFTA award, a Golden Globe, a Critics' Choice award, as well as nominations from the Chicago Film Critics, the London Critics' Circle, and the Washington DC Area Film Critics. Also in 2008, she starred in the box office smash MAMMA MIA, the film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical based on the songs of ABBA.
Streep made her film debut in 1977's JULIA with Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. In her second screen role, she starred opposite Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken in THE DEER HUNTER, which earned Streep her first Academy Award nomination. The following year, she won an Academy Award for her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in KRAMER VS. KRAMER. She then received her third Academy Award nomination for THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN and later went on to win the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in SOPHIE'S CHOICE, in which she starred alongside Peter MacNicol and Kevin Kline.
Other early film credits include Oscar-nominated performances in Mike Nichols's SILKWOOD, Sydney Pollack's OUT OF AFRICA, and Fred Schepisi's A CRY IN THE DARK, which also won her the Best Actress Award from the Cannes Film Festival and the New York Film Critics Circle as well as an AFI Award. She also appeared in Mike Nichols's HEARTBURN and Woody Allen's MANHATTAN.
In 2003, Streep's work in THE HOURS won her SAG and Golden Globe nominations. That same year, her performance in Spike Jonze's ADAPTATION won her a Golden Globe for Supporting Actress and BAFTA and Oscar nominations. Her other recent work includes THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, Robert Altman's A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, and THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, which earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress as well as Academy Award, SAG, and BAFTA nominations.
On stage, Streep appeared in the 1976 Broadway double-bill of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and A Memory of Two Mondays, the former of which won her the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Theater World Award, and a Tony nomination. Other theater credits include Secret Service, The Cherry Orchard, the New York Shakespeare Festival productions of Henry V and Measure for Measure opposite Sam Waterston; the Brecht/Weill musical Happy End; Alice at the Palace, which won her an Obie®; and Central Park productions of The Taming of the Shrew, The Seagull, and, most recently, Tony Kushner's adaptation of Brecht's Mother Courage.
In her television work, Streep has won Emmys for the eight-part mini-series "Holocaust" and for the Mike Nichols-directed HBO movie "Angels in America," which also won her Golden Globe and SAG Awards.
In 2004, Streep received an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2008 was honored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

JASON SCHWARTZMAN (Ash) made his motion picture acting debut as Max Fischer, an eccentric high school sophomore in Anderson's RUSHMORE opposite Bill Murray in 1999, his performance garnering a nomination for Most Promising Actor from the Chicago Film Critics Association. Schwartzman reteamed with Anderson for THE DARJEELING LIMITED, which he co-wrote and starred in opposite Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson, and the short HOTEL CHEVALIER, starring with Natalie Portman.
Schwartzman's recent credits include Judd Apatow's FUNNY PEOPLE, starring with Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler. Other feature credits include starring as King Louis XVI in Sofia Coppola's MARIE ANTOINETTE; SHOPGIRL, starring in a love triangle with Claire Danes and Steve Martin, who also adapted from his novel; BEWITCHED with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell; a starring role in David O. Russell's existential comedy I (heart) HUCKABEES with Dustin Hoffman, Naomi Watts, Jude Law, and Lily Tomlin; Roman Coppola's directorial debut, C.Q.; S1M0NE starring Al Pacino and Catharine Keener; and the ensemble comedy SLACKERS. Schwartzman recently wrapped production in Edgar Wright's comic book adaptation, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD opposite Michael Cera.
Jason is currently starring in the new HBO comedy series "Bored To Death" which premiered in September. Created by Jonathan Ames, the show also stars Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis.

BILL MURRAY (Badger) previously starred for Wes Anderson in RUSHMORE, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU and THE DARJEELING LIMITED. His portrayal of Herman Blume in RUSHMORE bringing him the New York Film Critics Circle, National Society of Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and Independent Spirit Awards for Best Supporting Actor.
Born in Chicago, Murray began his acting career there with the improvisational troupe Second City. He joined the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live in the show's second season, winning an Emmy Award as one of the show's writers.
After making his screen debut in Ivan Reitman's MEATBALLS, Murray reteamed with Reitman on STRIPES and the GHOSTBUSTERS movies. His film credits also include Harold Ramis' CADDYSHACK and GROUNDHOG DAY; Art Linson's WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM; Sydney Pollack's TOOTSIE; John Byrum's THE RAZOR'S EDGE; Richard Donner's SCROOGED; Frank Oz' WHAT ABOUT BOB?; John McNaughton's MAD DOG AND GLORY and WILD THINGS; Tim Burton's ED WOOD; Peter and Bobby Farrelly's KINGPIN; Jon Amiel's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE; Tim Robbins' CRADLE WILL ROCK; Michael Almereyda's HAMLET; Gil Kenan's CITY OF EMBER.
For his performance as Bob Harris in Sofia Coppola's LOST IN TRANSLATION, Murray received the Golden Globe, BAFTA, Independent Spirit, and New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago film critics' Awards, among others, for Best Actor. He also was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild and Academy Awards.
Murray starred for Jim Jarmusch in the "Delirium" segment of COFFEE AND CIGARETTES; BROKEN FLOWERS, for which he was nominated for a Satellite Award for Best Actor; and the forthcoming THE LIMITS OF CONTROL.
He will be next seen in Aaron Schneider's GET LOW, with Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek, and is the author of the book Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf.

WALLY WOLODARSKY (Kylie) has written for movies and television for over 20 years. He began his career on "The Tracy Ullman Show." He was an original writer on "The Simpsons," working there through the first four seasons. He has won two Emmys. In addition, Wally has directed three feature films, COLDBLOODED, SORORITY BOYS and SEEING OTHER PEOPLE. In 2009 he wrote the animated feature MONSTERS VS. ALIENS. He is currently working on a screenplay titled MYSTERY ON 5TH AVENUE for JJ Abrams and Paramount Pictures.

ERIC ANDERSON (Kristofferson) is an author and illustrator whose work has appeared in TIME, Texas Monthly, and the New York Times, as well as the film and DVD packaging for RUSHMORE, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, and THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU. His first book for young readers, Chuck Dugan is AWOL, was published in 2005. He is currently at work on a new series of adventure novels to be published by HarperChildren. Titled Henry Pidgeon Presents! it concerns a teenage boy who inherits a science fiction television program in 1950s New York.

MICHAEL GAMBON (Franklin Bean) has spent the last four decades working across stage, screen and television, winning acclaim and acting awards in every medium, including the Oliver.
Arguably most familiar as Professor Dumbledore in HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, Gambon shared in Screen Actors Guild and Critics Choice Awards as part of the ensemble cast of Robert Altman's GOSFORD PARK and received Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominations for his portrayal of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the HBO movie "The Path To War."
Recently he appeared in Jake Paltrow's THE GOOD NIGHT, Robert De Niro's THE GOOD SHEPHERD, with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED and will next been seen in THE BOOK OF ELI, directed by the Hughes Brothers.
A native of Ireland, Gambon began his career with the Edwards-MacLiammoir Gate Theatre in Dublin. In 1963, he was one of the original members of the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic under Laurence Olivier and his extensive theatre repertoire encompasses numerous productions in London's West End, including Simon Gray's Otherwise Engaged; Harold Pinter's Old Times; and the title role in Uncle Vanya. In 1987, he won an Olivier Award for Best Actor for the London revival of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge.
On the screen, Gambon's many film credits include Anderson's THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, the remake of THE OMEN, SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, SYLVIA, OPEN RANGE, THE INSIDER, Tim Burton's SLEEPY HOLLOW, and THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER. He also appeared in HBO's award-winning miniseries "Angels in America," directed by Mike Nichols.
In 1998, Gambon was knighted for services to theatre.

In 1979, WILLEM DAFOE (Rat) was given a small role in Michael Cimino's HEAVEN'S GATE from which he was fired. His first feature role came shortly after in Kathryn Bigelow's THE LOVELESS. From there, he went on to perform in over 60 films - in Hollywood (SPIDERMAN, THE ENGLISH PATIENT, FINDING NEMO, ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, WHITE SANDS, MISSISSIPPI BURNING, STREETS OF FIRE) and in independent cinema in the U.S. (THE CLEARING, ANIMAL FACTORY, BASQUIAT, THE BOONDOCK SAINTS, AMERICAN PSYCHO) and abroad (von Trier's MANDERLAY, Yim Ho's PAVILLION OF WOMEN, Yurek Bogayevicz's EDGES OF THE LORD, Wenders' FAR AWAY SO CLOSE, and Brian Gilbert's TOM & VIV).
He has chosen projects for diversity of roles and opportunities to work with strong directors. He has worked in the films of Wes Anderson (THE LIFE AQUATIC), Martin Scorsese (THE AVIATOR, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST), Paul Schrader (AUTO FOCUS, AFFLICTION, LIGHT SLEEPER, THE WALKER), David Cronenberg (EXISTENZ), Abel Ferrara (NEW ROSE HOTEL), David Lynch (WILD AT HEART), William Friedkin (TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA), and Oliver Stone (BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, PLATOON).
He was nominated twice for the Academy Award (PLATOON and SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE) and once for the Golden Globe. Among other nominations and awards, he received an Los Angeles Film Critics Award and an Independent Spirit Award.
Recent projects include ANAMORPH, MR. BEAN'S HOLIDAY, Paul Schrader's ADAM RESURRECTED, Spike Lee's INSIDE MAN, Paul Weitz's AMERICAN DREAMZ, the Nobuhiro Suwa segment of PARIS, JE T'AIME and Giada Colagrande's BEFORE IT HAD A NAME which was co written by Mr. Dafoe.
Upcoming films include Lars Von Trier's ANTICHRIST, FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN opposite Julia Roberts, Julian Schnabel's MIRAL, Werner Herzog's MY SON MY SON, Christian Carion's FAREWELL, Giada Colagrande's A WOMAN, Theo Angelopoulos' THE DUST OF TIME, Abel Ferrara's GO GO TALES, Paul Weitz's THE VAMPIRE'S ASSISTANT and the Lionsgate film DAYBREAKERS co-starring with Ethan Hawke.
Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. He has created and performed in the group's work from 1977 thru 2005, both in the U.S. and internationally.

OWEN WILSON (Coach Skip) co-wrote and starred in Anderson's first film BOTTLE ROCKET as well as co-writing and co-executive producing his second feature RUSHMORE.
The pair was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Original Screenplay for their third collaboration, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, in which Wilson also starred opposite Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow. Wilson again starred opposite Murray and Huston in Anderson's THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU. Director and star teamed for a fourth time for 2007's THE DARJEELING LIMITED.
Wilson's recent credits include Steven Brill's comedy DRILLBIT TAYLOR, produced by Judd Apatow; alongside Ben Stiller in Shawn Levy's NIGHT OF THE MUSEUM and NIGHT OF THE MUSEUM 2: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN; with Jennifer Aniston in the hit romantic comedy MARLEY & ME; opposite Kate Hudson and Matt Dillon in YOU, ME AND DUPREE.
In 2006 Wilson starred in the smash hit comedy WEDDING CRASHERS opposite Vince Vaughn and provided the voice of Lightning McQueen in Disney/Pixar's animated feature CARS, which was nominated for an Academy Award® in the category of Best Animated Film.
Wilson's additional acting credits include THE CABLE GUY, ARMAGEDDON, THE MINUS MAN, SHANGHAI NOON, MEET THE PARENTS, ZOOLANDER, BEHIND ENERMY LINES, I SPY, SHANGHAI KNIGHTS and STARSKY AND HUTCH.

He also served as associate producer on the Oscar® winning film AS GOOD AS IT GETS and is reteaming with that film's writer-director James L. Brooks on a currently untitled project.

JARVIS COCKER (Petey) has been making music for two-thirds of his life. Two dozen of these years (1978 - 2002) were spent in Pulp, a group with whom he enjoyed most of the experiences you can have as the singer in a band. First feted by John Peel, the group eventually became the country's slowest overnight sensation during a heady period book-ended by 'Common People' becoming a touchstone anthem at their Glastonbury headline slot in 1995.
Over this time, Jarvis went from being the quintessential outsider to being one of the most recognized and cherished figures in Britain. After Pulp, Jarvis consoled himself with semi-retirement, moving to Paris, making occasional media appearances to talk about Outsider Art, Scott Walker or other personal crusades, and sometimes writing songs for others (Marianne Faithfull, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nancy Sinatra and Air).
He wrote three songs for, and briefly appeared in, HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, and took part in the 'I'm Your Man' tribute to Leonard Cohen around the globe.
The appearance of his debut solo album 'Jarvis' at the end of 2006 was greeted with an open-armed goodwill it is hard to imagine being reserved for many other singers. After picking up these raving reviews, he toured with his band around Europe, USA and Australia in 2007.
In 2008, Jarvis premiered his lecturing skills with 'Saying The Unsayable', a talk about lyrics at the Brighton Festival. He also celebrated Rough Trade Records' 30th anniversary with the 'Looking Rough at 30' tour. All this between recording his anticipated follow-up album, 'Further Complications', with Steve Albini in Chicago, which was released in May 2009.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

WES ANDERSON (Director/Co-writer/Producer) was born in Houston, Texas and attended college at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the director and co-writer of BOTTLE ROCKET, RUSHMORE, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, THE DARJEELING LIMITED and the short HOTEL CHEVALIER.

NOAH BAUMBACH (Co-writer) wrote and directed MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE and KICKING AND SCREAMING. With Anderson, he co-wrote THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU and he is a contributor to The New Yorker magazine's "Shouts and Murmurs" department. His next film, GREENBERG, will be released in 2010 by Focus Features.

ROALD DAHL (Author) was born in 1916 in Wales of Norwegian parents. He spent his childhood in England and, at age eighteen, went to work for the Shell Oil Company in Africa. When World War II broke out, he joined the Royal Air Force and became a fighter pilot. At the age of twenty-six he moved to Washington, D.C., and it was there he began to write. His first short story, which recounted his adventures in the war, was bought by The Saturday Evening Post, and so began a long and illustrious career.
After establishing himself as a writer for adults, Roald Dahl began writing children's stories in 1960 while living in England with his family. His first stories were written as entertainment for his own children, to whom many of his books are dedicated.
Roald Dahl is now considered one of the most beloved storytellers of our time. Although he passed away in 1990, his popularity continues to increase as his fantastic novels, including James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, delight an ever-growing legion of fans.
Learn more about Roald Dahl ion the official Roald Dahl website: www.roalddahl.com

ALLISON ABBATE (Producer) is the BAFTA-Award winning producer of IRON GIANT and TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE.
Allison has made a career of working on the most innovative animated features in the business. A native of New York, Abbate relocated to Hollywood in 1989 and kicked off her career on string of beloved Disney animated films including THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER. Her next move was to collaborate with Tim Burton, as artistic coordinator on the cult-classic THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
Abbate then moved to Paris for Walt Disney studios to set-up a satellite animation studio and co-produce the Academy Award-nominated Mickey Mouse short RUNAWAY BRAIN.
In 1996, Abbate joined Warner Bros. Pictures, where she co-produced the international hit feature SPACE JAM which combined classic animated Warner Bros. Pictures characters with live action sequences. This film, headlined by Bugs Bunny, Michael Jordan and Bill Murray, broke new ground in animated features.
She then went on to earn a BAFTA award in 1999, as producer of Brad Bird's internationally acclaimed IRON GIANT, an adaptation of British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes' acclaimed children's' book, The Iron Man.
She followed up her success on IRON GIANT producing LOONEY TUNES BACK IN ACTION, another family comedy which teamed Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck with Brendan Fraser and Steve Martin, then moved to London in 2004 to produce the haunting musical feature, TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter which was nominated for an Oscar in 2005.
Presently, Allison has reunited with Tim Burton yet again, and is producing FRANKENWEENIE, a stop motion animated feature based on a live action short from Tim's early career.

SCOTT RUDIN (Producer) films include: JULIE & JULIA; DOUBT; REVOLUTIONARY ROAD; NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN; THERE WILL BE BLOOD; THE DARJEELING LIMITED; REPRISE; THE QUEEN; MARGOT AT THE WEDDING; NOTES ON A SCANDAL; VENUS; CLOSER; TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE; I HEART HUCKABEES; THE VILLAGE; SCHOOL OF ROCK; THE HOURS; IRIS; THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS; ZOOLANDER; SLEEPY HOLLOW; WONDER BOYS; ANGELA'S ASHES; BRINGING OUT THE DEAD; SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT; A CIVIL ACTION; THE TRUMAN SHOW; IN & OUT; RANSOM; MOTHER; THE FIRST WIVES CLUB; CLUELESS; NOBODY'S FOOL; THE FIRM; SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER; SISTER ACT; THE ADDAMS FAMILY.
Theatre includes: Passion; Hamlet; Seven Guitars; A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to The Forum; Skylight; The Chairs; The Blue Room; Closer; Amy's View; Copenhagen; The Designated Mourner; The Goat; Medea; The Caretaker; Caroline, or Change; The Normal Heart; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Doubt; Mark Twain Tonight!; Faith Healer; The History Boys; Shining City; Stuff Happens; The Vertical Hour; The Year of Magical Thinking; Gypsy; Exit The King; God of Carnage.
Upcoming films: Nancy Meyers' IT'S COMPLICATED, Noah Baumbach's GREENBERG, Peter Weir's THE WAY BACK, Stephen Frears' TAMARA DREWE, Rick Linklater's LIARS A TO E, David Fincher's THE SOCIAL NETWORK and Ethan and Joel Coen's TRUE GRIT.

JEREMY DAWSON (Producer) started in the film industry by designing the title sequence for Darren Aronofsky's debut feature PI. He has designed visual effects and animation for many films including FRIDA, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and THE FOUNTAIN. He was also 2nd Unit Director on the latter. Dawson's association with Wes Anderson began when he served as visual effects supervisor on THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, and was a co-producer on THE DARJEELING LIMITED.

STEVEN RALES (Executive Producer) founded Santa Monica-based production company Indian Paintbrush Productions in 2006, which is committed to developing and producing films with the industry's leading and emerging filmmaking talent. Rales executive produced and co-financed Anderson's THE DARJEELING LIMITED with Fox Searchlight Pictures and executive produced and co-financed FANTASTIC MR. FOX.

ARNON MILCHAN (Executive Producer) is widely renowned as one of the most prolific and successful independent film producers of the past 25 years, with over 100 feature films to his credit. Born in Israel, Milchan was educated at the University of Geneva. His first business venture was transforming his father's modest business into one of his country's largest agro-chemical companies. This early achievement was a harbinger of Milchan's now-legendary reputation in the international marketplace as a keen businessman.
Soon, Milchan began to underwrite projects in areas that had always held a special interest for him - film, television and theater. Early projects include Roman Polanski's theater production of Amadeus, Dizengoff 99, La Menace, The Medusa Touch and the mini-series "Masada." By the end of the 1980s, Milchan had produced such films as Martin Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY, Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON AT TIME IN AMERICA and Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL.
After the huge successes of PRETTY WOMAN and THE WAR OF THE ROSES, Milchan founded New Regency Productions and went on to produce a string of successful films including J.F.K, SOMMERSBY, A TIME TO KILL, FREE WILLY, THE CLIENT, TIN CUP, UNDER SIEGE, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, THE NEGOTIATOR, CITY OF ANGELS, ENTRAPMENT, FIGHT CLUB, BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE, DON'T SAY A WORD, DAREDEVIL, MAN ON FIRE, GUESS WHO, MR. AND MRS. SMITH, BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE 2, THE FOUNTAIN, ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS, JUMPER, STREET KINGS, WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, MARLEY & ME, and BRIDE WARS.
Along the way, Milchan brought on board a powerful investor and partner who shares his vision: Twentieth Century Fox. Today Fox owns a part of Regency and distributes its films worldwide. Milchan also successfully diversified his company's activities within the sphere of entertainment, most specifically in the realm of television through Regency Television ("Malcolm In The Middle," "The Bernie Mac Show," "Windfall" and "Roswell") and sports where the company was at one time the largest shareholder of PUMA, the worldwide athletic apparel and shoe conglomerate based in Germany, which was taken from the brink of bankruptcy and turned into a seven billion dollar company. In addition, Regency has acquired the worldwide television rights to Women's Tennis Association Tournaments from 1999 through 2011 and has licensed these rights to Pan European Broadcaster Eurosport S.A. Today Regency owns a large stake in Channel 10, one of only two commercial broadcast stations in Israel.. as well as a stake in the Israeli Network, a television station brought to the United States via a satellite distribution agreement with Echostar and online worldwide, and in BabyFirst TV, the first TV channel for babies ages 3months to 3 years with a world wide distribution. Regency also teamed up with Richemont (a company own by Johann Rupert) and invested in Meridian, a leading audio/video company based out of the UK that makes the best home entertainment products available today, and Kaenon, a high end company making the best polarizing sunglasses in the world and based out of Newport Beach CA.

MARK GUSTAFSON (Animation Director) spent many years working at Will Vinton Studios, now Latika Studios, first as claymation artist, before rising to supervising director and director on numerous television commercials, pop promos and shorts. He has directed several short stop-motion films as well as an episode of "The PJs" TV series.

TRISTAN OLIVER (Director Of Photography) has been a cinematographer for 20 years and is a graduate of the University of Bristol and Bristol Film School. His early success in winning the BP Kodak Student Cinematography prize led to a short period at the Moscow film school. Although happy working in all media, it has been animation that has defined his work. His long collaboration with director Nick Park includes Academy award winners, WRONG TROUSERS, A CLOSE SHAVE and CURSE OF THE WERERABBIT.
His work with other directors has produced BAFTA winners STAGE FRIGHT and 'THE BIG STORY as well as the popular feature film CHICKEN RUN.
In the field of commercials, Tristan likes to work across the media and has filmed a number of significant live action/animation mix campaigns most notably for Sony, Becks, Tesco and Tennants.
A long time member of BAFTA, Tristan has sat on the Film and Children's committees with responsibility for children's and family film. He has chaired the animation category awards' jury on a number of occasions and recalling his family background in theatrical costume making has sat on the costume jury as well.
In his spare time, what there is of it, Tristan likes to spend time with his family, read, go to the theatre, shout at people about films and buy wristwatches.

NELSON LOWRY (Production Designer) was art director on TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE and two episodes of the stop-motion animated TV series, The PJs. Born in the US but now resident in the UK, Lowry worked as a visual effects matte artist on Danny Boyle's SUNSHINE and was digital art director on FRED CLAUS.

ALEXANDRE DESPLAT (Composer) has twice been nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Original Score for Stephen Frears' THE QUEEN and for David Fincher's THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. He has also been nominated for four Golden Globes, winning once for THE PAINTED VEIL. His score for Peter Webber's GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING brought him much acclaim and lead to his working in a series of Hollywood movies, including Jonathan Glazer's BIRTH, Ang Lee's LUST, CAUTION, and Stephen Gaghan's SYRIANA (for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe). Desplat's recent credits include Frears' CHERI, COCO AVANT CHANEL (starring Audrey Tautou) and Nora Ephron's JULIE & JULIA. He is currently working on TWILIGHT: NEW MOON, Terrence Malick's THE TREE OF LIFE and Roman Polanski's THE GHOST.

ANDREW WEISBLUM (Supervising Editor) first collaborated with Wes Anderson on THE DARJEELING LIMITED. More recently, he edited THE WRESTLER for Darren Aronofsky. Andrew was also Editor on Zoe Cassavetes' BROKEN ENGLISH, as well as the independent films UNDERMIND and CONEY ISLAND BABY and was an additional editor on Nora Ephron's BEWITCHED and John Waters' A DIRTY SHAME. He served as Visual Effects Editor for Darren Aronofsky's THE FOUNTAIN and Rob Marshall's CHICAGO (Academy Award winner for Best Editing and Best Picture as well as the 2003 American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Musical/Comedy). Weisblum worked as an assistant editor for more than a decade on independent features and large-scale productions, including Brian De Palma's SNAKE EYES and Richard Linklater's SCHOOL OF ROCK.

RANDALL POSTER's (Music Supervisor) most recent credits as music supervisor include Todd Phillips' THE HANGOVER, Sam Mendes' AWAY WE GO and Drew Barrymore's WHIP IT.
With AWAY WE GO, Music Supervisor Randall Poster continued an association with director Sam Mendes that began with Mendes JARHEAD. Poster also worked with Mendes on last year's award-winning REVOLUTIONARY ROAD.

MacKINNON and SAUNDERS (Puppets Fabricated by) are based in the UK, who design and build high quality animation puppets, models and maquettes.
MacKinnon and Saunders produce TV commercials and entertainment programs for children's TV (the new cartoon series "Frankenstein's Cat" aired on CBBC and BBC1 in 2008).
MacKinnon and Saunders offer various digital services including Maya Unlimited 3D.
Past and present clients include HOT Animation, Future Films, Passion Pictures, Warner Bros., Loose Moose, Cosgrove Hall, Aardman Animations, Publicis New York, Nickelodeon UK, Disney, Tiger Aspect, Barry Purves and Famous Flying Films.

Line Producer

Simon Quinn

Production Manager

Charlotte Owen

Production Supervisor

Fred De Bradeny

1st Assistant Director

Kev Harwood

Co-Producer

Molly Cooper

Puppet Fabrication Supervisor

Andy Gent

Visual Effects Supervisor
Tim Ledbury

Design Consultant
Alex McDowell, RDI

ADDITIONAL VOICE CAST

(IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

Weasel Wes Anderson
Linda Otter Karen Duffy
Walter Boggis Robin Hurlstone
Nathan Bunce Hugo Guinness
Mrs. Bean Helen McCrory
Squirrel Contractor Roman Coppola
Agnes Juman Malouf
Beaver's Son Jeremy Dawson
Bean's Son Garth Jennings
Action 12 Reporter Brian Cox
Explosives Man Tristan Oliver
Mole James Hamilton
Beaver Steven Rales
Pilot Rob Hersov
Dr. Badger Jennifer Furches
Rabbit's Ex-girlfriend Allison Abbate
Rabbit Girl Molly Cooper
Field Mouse Adrien Brody
Rabbit Mario Batali
Fire Chief Martin Ballard

ANIMATION DEPARTMENT

Animation Supervisor

Mark Waring

Key Animators

Jason Stalman
Kim Keukeleire
Dan Alderson
Brian Hansen
Brad Schiff
Anthony Farquhar-Smith
Andy Biddle
Will Hodge
Chuck Duke
Jens Gulliksen
Tobias Fouracre
Payton Curtis
Malcolm Lamont
Jeff Riley
Pete Dodd
Chris Tichbourne
Trey Thomas

Animators

Tim Allen
Elie Chapuis
Timon Dowdeswell
Caroline Maure
Jody Meredith
Leo Nicholson
Andrew Spilsted
Kevin Walton

Assistant Animators

Daniel Gill
Michael Hughes
Patricia Sourdes

STORY DEPARTMENT

Lead Storyboard Artist

Christian De Vita

Storyboard Artists

Tony Cervone
Padraig Collins
Nikolay Moustakov
Richard Nye
Colin White

ART DEPARTMENT

Art Director

Francesca Maxwell

Assistant Art Director

Alice Bird

Art Department Supervisor

Roddy Macdonald

Art Department Coordinator

Mark Woollard

Lead Character Designer

Felicie Haymoz

Character Designers

Victor Georgiev
Huy Vu

Environment Designers

Chris Appelhans
Alan Case
Turlo Griffin
Todd Van Hulzen
Andy Roper

Draughtsmen

Poppy Luard
Hannah Moseley
Alexandra Walker

Junior Draughtsman

Gavin Dean

Character Turnaround Artists

Jill Brooks
Teddy Hall

2D Animator

Ray Lewis

Art Department Modellers

Colin Armitage
Jim Barr
Roy Bell
Holly Blenkins
Lorna Cashmore
Mick Chippington
Georgina Everard
Darren Fitzsimons
Charles Fletcher
Celia Garrard
Mark Gunning
Maggie Haden
Amy Horwell
Grant Humberstone
Barry Jones
Christine Jones
Clare Kinross
Angela Kyriacou
Sam Leake
John Lee
Thecla Mallinson
Paul Marsh
Andre Masters
Marie Parsons
Emma Pickard
Elizabeth Quinton
Gavin Richards
Cathy Stewart
William Sumpter
Tony Travis
Laura Treen
Joe Vassalo
Joe Vetesse
Karl Wardle
Sarah Wells
Terry Whitehouse
Thomas Wignall

Assistant Modellers

Robin Crowley
Collette Pidgeon
Yossel Simpson Little

Art Department Assistants

Tom Aizlewood
Lucy Begent

Junior Graphic Artist

Gala Jover

Art Department Runner

Catriona Rings

Stage Assistants

Christian Passerotti
Tim Ross

Mrs. Fox's Paintings by

Turlo Griffin

Vehicles

Jeff Cliff Model Effects Ltd

John Wright Modelmaking

PUPPET DEPARTMENT

Puppet Modellers

Vicky Ball
Fiona Barty
Amy Burnand
Steve Carey
Lisa Carracedo
Carrie Clarke
Deborah Cook
Josie Corben
Nigel Cornford
Michele Gelormini
Valma Hiblen
Sam Holland
Angela Kiely
Janet Knechtel
Thalia Lane
Cormac McKee
Angela Pang
Matt Sanders
Cathy Snelling
Vicky Stockwell
Aine Woods
Kevin Wright

Junior Modeller

Rebecca Smith

Puppet and Art Dept. Coordinator

Melissa Rogers

Puppet Department Assistant

Katherine Archer

Puppet Department Runner

Natasha Harrison

Puppet Wrangler

Richard Lake

Lead Model Rigger

Richard Blakey

Puppet Model Riggers

Oliver Jones
Dennis Russo
Ben Weller

Puppet Department Interns

Anna Des Champs
Anne-Sophie Lecourt

Mackinnon & Saunders Puppet Crew

Ian Mackinnon Peter Saunders Sara Mullock
Chris Bowden Rebecca Hunt Rosetta Cassini
Simon White Gareth Richards Neil Sutcliffe
Noel Estevez-Baker Joe Holman Stuart Sutcliffe
Claire Moore Paolo Goldstein Nigel Leach
Amy Wilkinson Caroline Wallace Graeme Hall
John Turnbull Kevin Scillitoe Ruth Curtis
Gemma Slack Jonny Grimshaw Nick Smalley-Ramsdale
Richard Pickersgill Paul Jones Shannon O'Neill
Barbara Biddulph Christine Keogh Cordelia O'Neill
Alex Williams Laura Clempson Anne Sutcliffe
Fiona Bunting Geraldine Walker Michele Pouncey
Karen Nicholls Amanda Thomas Michelle Scattergood
Bridget Smith Robby Manning Rebecca Redhead
Rosie Taylor Tom Pilling Tom Clempson
Emma Boyson Bethan Jones Cherie Taylor
Richard Jeffers

PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT

Production Coordinator

Jules Collings

Production System Developer

Dave Powell

Production Assistants

Beni Hardiman
Faye Robinson

2nd Assistant Directors

Ben Barrowman
Dan Pascall

3rd Assistant Directors

Greg Furber
James Emmott
Alice Dunseath

Executive Assistant to Wes Anderson

Octavia Peissel

Assistant to Wes Anderson

Martin Scali

PA for American Empirical Pictures

John Peet

Assistants to Scott Rudin

David Kennedy
Fanny Schwartz
Nick Zayas
Scott Epstein

Assistant to Allison Abbate

Melanie Jones

Assistant to Steven Rales

Sandra Schilling

Indian Paintbrush Executives

Joseph O. Bunting III
Deborah Wettstein
Jill Rachel Morris

Continuity

Claire Watson

Production Receptionist

Polly Kemp

Production Runners

Roxanne Donovan
Ella Harris
Ryan King
Louise Murray
Jannika Oberg
Ana Tiquia

I.T. Support

Murad Ali

Production Consultant

Susan Blanchard

CLEARANCES

Ruth Halliday - The Clearing House

LOCATION SCRIPT SUPERVISOR
Jennifer Furches

PRODUCTION INTERNS

Francesca Ackerson
Emily Brick
Edward Bursch
Sean Elligers

VISUAL EFFECTS DEPARTMENT

Compositing Supervisor

Rupert Davies

Visual Effects Producer

Liz Chan

CG Supervisor

Nic Birmingham

CG Artist

Victor Georgiev

Previz Artist

Craig Mepham

Compositors

Qian Han
Wendy Seddon
Nicolas Hodgkinson
Ben Hicks
Grainne Freeman
Natalie MacDonald
Marc Hutchings
Rachel Wright
Cristina Puente

Rotoscope Paint Artists

Jonathan Brady
Luke Sikking
Sherin Mahboob
Tom van Dop
Kate Burgess

VFX Editor

Daryl Jordan

Assistant VFX Editor

Lucy Benson

VFX Production Assistant

Dorothee Freytag

Additional Visual Effects by

Lip Sync Post

Visual Effects Supervisor Tom Collier
Head of Visual Effects Stefan Drury
Visual Effects Co-ordinator Samantha Tracey
Head of 2D Sheila Wickens

Digital Compositors

Simon Allen
Naomi Butler
Chris Elson
Matt Foster
Richard Nosworthy
Glen Pratt
Angela Rose
Blake Winder

Stranger FX

Visual Effects Producer

Sally Spencer

Digital Artists

Paddy Eason
David Emeny
Hugh Macdonald

LIGHTING & CAMERA DEPARTMENT

Lighting Camera

Toby Howell
Graham Pettit
James Lewis
Jeremy Hogg

Head Camera Assistant

Gunnar Heidar

Camera Assistants

Laura Howie
Kathrin Woodtli
Sarah Thompson
Christopher Nunn
Jamie Kennerley

Gaffer

Toby Farrar

Electricians

James Foreman
Paulo Fernandes

Practical Lighting Specialist

Gary Welch

Trainee Lighting Technician

Jamie Khosravi

Motion Control Supervisor

Andy Bowman

Head Motion Control Operator

Bobby Logan

Motion Control Operator

Christophe Leignel

Motion Control Assistants

Tommy Holman
Mark Swaffield

EDITORIAL

Editors

Ralph Foster
Stephen Perkins

First Assistant Editor

Claire Dodgson

Second Assistant Editors

John Addis
Michael Ho

Editorial and Story Coordinator

Zoe Radford

Editorial Department Assistant

Katherine Janes

Track Reader

Anthony Hull

POST PRODUCTION

Post Production Supervisor

Jeannine Berger

Supervising Sound Editors

David Evans
Jacob Ribicoff

Dialogue Editors

Tony Currie
Tony Martinez
Gerald Donlan

Sound Effects Editors

Andy Kennedy
Stefan Henrix
Steve Browell
Brian Emrich

Assistant Sound Editor

Eric McAllister

Re-recording Mixers

Sven Taits
Steve Browell

Foley Editors

Harry Barnes
Stuart Stanley

Foley Artists

Andi Derrick
Peter Burgis
Jay Peck

Foley Mixer

Ryan Collison

Foley Recordist

Adam Mendez

Re-Recording Engineers

Paul Jarvis
Mike King
Jeff Dalmaine
Joe Maher

ADR Mixer

Peter Gleaves

ADR Recordist

Rick Gould

Dialogue Re-recordists/ Engineers

Laurent Bindar
Denis Caribaux
Andrew Feliciano
Michael Miller
Didier Pouydeffeau
Michael Suarez
Adam West

Location Sound Recordists

Noah Timan
Stuart Wilson

Scheduling Manager

Suzanne Facenfield

Sound Studio Assistant

Nick Del-Molino

Foley Recorded at Anvil Post Production (Technicolor London)

Digital Intermediate by Technicolor Creative Services - London

DI Project Managers

Matthew Bristowe
Begoña Lopez

Colorist

Max Horton

Online Editor

Richard Etchells

Titles by

LOOK EFFECTS

MUSIC

Supervising Music Editor

Gerard McCann

Music Editor

Peter Clarke

Music Coordinator

Jim Dunbar

Music Clearance and Licensing

Jessica Dolinger
Sara Matarazzo

Traffic Quintet

Dominique Lemonnier
Christophe Morin
Philippe Noharet
Anne Vilette
Estelle Vilotte

Soloists

Mandolin: Alison Stephens
Celeste: Dave Arch
Banjo / Ukulele / Guitar / Mandolin: John Parricelli
Guitars: Mitch Dalton
Guitars / Banjo /Mandolin : Nigel Woodhouse
Jews' Harp / Spoons/Toy percussions: Paul Clarvis
Trumpet,Piccolo Trumpet : Maurice Murphy
Piccolo,Recorder: Helen Keen
Keyboard percussions: Frank Ricotti
Drum Kit: Ralph Salmins
Timpani: Tristan Fry
Recorders: Piers Adams, Jill Kemp, Annabel Knight
Double Bass: Chris Laurence

Woodwinds

Helen Keen, Philippa Davies, Anna Noakes, Nina Robertson, Nicholas Bucknall, Richard Addison, David Fuest

Saxophones

Phil Todd, Jamie Talbot, Dave Bishop

Brass

David Pyatt, Richard Watkins, Richard Berry, Maurice Murphy, Rod Franks, Nigel Gomme, Dudley Bright, Mike Hext, Darren Smith, Dave Stewart, Richard Edwards, Tracey Edwards, Owen Slade, Jim Anderson

Percussions

Frank Ricotti, Paul Clarvis, Stephen Henderson, Gary Kettel, Bill Lockhart, Sam Walton, Glyn Matthews, Chris Baron

Boys' Choir

London Oratory School Schola

Choirmaster

Lee Ward

Solo Boy Vocalist

Felix Wareing

*****
Recorded at; Abbey Road Studios (London) & Studios Guillaume Tell (Paris)

Recording Engineers

Andrew Dudman, Peter Cobbin and Sam Ockell
Mixed by Andrew Dudman at Abbey Road Studios, London

Protools Operators

John Barrett
Andy Kitchen
Tristan Montrocq

Musicians' Contractor

Isobel Griffiths

Assistant Musicians' Contractor

Lucy Whalley

Music Production Coordinator

Xavier Forcioli

Orchestrations

Jean-Pascal Beintus, Alexandre Desplat, Marie-Christine Desplat

Music Preparation

Norbert Vergonjanne
Claude Romano

PETEY'S BAND

Jean-Yves Lozac'h
Gregoire Garrigues
David Coulter
Jean Touitou

recorded by Gregoire Garrigues and Jean Pierre Sluys at STUDIO A.P.C., Paris

SONGS

"The Ballad Of Davy Crockett"
Performed by The Wellingtons
Courtesy of Walt Disney Records

"Heroes And Villains"
Written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks
Performed by The Beach Boys
Courtesy of Capitol Records
Under license from EMI Film & Television Music

"Fooba Wooba John"
Traditional
Performed by Burl Ives
Courtesy of Columbia Records
By arrangement with Sony Music Licensing

"Love"
Written by George Bruns and Floyd Huddleston
Performed by Nancy Adams
Courtesy of Walt Disney Records

"Buckeye Jim"
Written by Burl Ives
Performed by Burl Ives
Courtesy of Columbia Records
By arrangement with Sony Music Licensing

"Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-flat major"
written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performed by Amadeus Concert Orchestra of Polish Radio featuring Jacek Muzyk,
Horn Courtesy of Naxos
By arrangement with Source/Q

"The Grey Goose"
Written by Burl Ives
Performed by Burl Ives
Courtesy of Columbia Records
By arrangement with Sony Music Licensing

"Une petite île"
Written by Georges Delerue
Performed by Georges Delerue
Courtesy of Sidomusic B. Liechti & Cie

"Street Fighting Man"
Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Performed by The Rolling Stones
Courtesy of ABKCO Music & Records, Inc.

"Petey's Song"
Written by Jarvis Cocker, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach
Performed by Jarvis Cocker
Courtesy of Rough Trade Records

"Night And Day"
Written by Cole Porter
Performed by Art Tatum
Courtesy of Storyville Records
By arrangement with The Music Sales Group

"Adagio"
Written by Georges Delerue
Performed by Georges Delerue
Courtesy of Sidomusic B. Liechti & Cie

"Le Grand Choral"
Written by Georges Delerue
Performed by Georges Delerue
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

"I Get Around"
Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Performed by The Beach Boys
Courtesy of Capitol Records
Under license from EMI Film & Television Music

"Ol' Man River"
Written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern
Performed by The Beach Boys
Courtesy of Capitol Records
Under license from EMI Film & Television Music

"Let Her Dance"
Written by Bobby Fuller
Performed by Bobby Fuller Four
Courtesy of Del-Fi / Rhino Entertainment Company
By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

Soundtrack available on Records

DIGITAL SYSTEMS

Digital Systems Engineers

Matt Kitcat
Rupert "Fish" Fishwick

Network Engineer

Richard Crocomb

IT Consultant

Adrian Baxter

Studio Technician

Jonathan Hearn

FINANCE

Accountant

Jeffrey Broom

Assistant Accountant

James Broom

LEGAL CONSULTANTS

Wiggin LLP

Financing Provided by Bank of Ireland

Bank of Ireland Legal Advisor

David Quli of Wiggin

SPECIAL THANKS TO

Juman Malouf
Liccy Dahl
The Lambros Family
Angel McConnell
Mike Nichols
Cameron Crowe
Steve Kloves
Michael Chabon
Wally Wolodarsky & Maya Forbes
Donald Chaffin
Alice Bamford
Nancy Meyers
Steve Smith
Jody Klein
Iris Keitel

DOLBY LOGO NEEDS TO BE NON DIGITAL

DTS LOGO

SDDS LOGO

Approved No. 45468

MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

(C) 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Indian Paintbrush Productions LLC and Regency Entertainment (USA), Inc. in the U.S. only.

(C) 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Indian Paintbrush Productions LLC and Monarchy Enterprises S.a.r.l. in all territories except Brazil, Italy, Japan, Korea and Spain.

(C) 2009 TCF Hungary Film Rights Exploitation Limited Liability Company, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Indian Paintbrush Productions LLC and Monarchy Enterprises S.a.r.l. in Brazil, Italy, Japan, Korea and Spain.

Regency and Regency's "R" logo are registered trademarks of Monarchy Enterprises S.a.r.l.

The events, characters and firms depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarity
to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or firms is purely coincidental.

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and any unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition of this motion picture
could result in criminal prosecution as well as civil liability.

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