Fantastic Mr Fox

Wes Anderson's movies include The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited. They typically involve a large number of characters, droll dialogue, and Bill Murray. Fantastic Mr Fox is no exception, but it represents a major technical leap: an ambitious stop-motion animation for all ages that critics are acclaiming as his best work yet.

What made you want to adapt Fantastic Mr Fox?
This was the first book I ever personally owned. It was a book I loved as a child and that introduced me to Roald Dahl's work, so it made a big impression on me. Then about ten years ago I approached Felicity Dahl, Roald Dahl's wife, and asked for permission to do it.

What exactly was it about the story that you loved?
The thing that I love is a character that is a thread through Dahl's works: these fathers who are often a bit shady. They don't respect authority and they love to break the rules. In his autobiography you get that sense that he didn't really accept anybody's rules.

Great cast. How difficult were they to assemble?
It wasn't easy. [Laughs]. Bill Murray and Owen [Wilson] and Jason [Schwartzman] are guys who I have known for a long time, so that's one thing, but if you have George Clooney that really brings some power to the cast.

What made you think of Clooney?
I've always been a fan, and as soon as the script was done I thought, well, who is going to be Mr Fox? And I thought Cary Grant would have been good. But then in 20 seconds of thinking of Cary Grant we were talking about George Clooney. I discovered that he has the most wonderful voice.

How overwhelming was this project?
There are a million decisions, more than a live-action movie. 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 there's 29 units going at once. It was insane.

Part of the script was written at Dahl's actual house in Buckinghamshire; why?
I'd visited there and it occurred to me that it might be very inspiring for Noah [Baumbach, co-writer] and I to start our writing there. We also thought we'd see what we'd pick up, and in fact we modelled the whole movie on that place and the area around it.

Why did you decide to record the voices outside rather than in a studio?
I wanted it to be very natural and sort of like a documentary. All the actors were together and would talk at the same time as people do. If the scene took place by a river, we recorded it by a river. That's probably an unusual way to do it.

What were your inspirations for the film?
There's an animated film called Le Roman de Renard [1930] that was a great influence on us because one of the animation techniques they use is to have multiple sizes and scales. So there are puppets that are a couple of inches high and puppets that are eighteen inches high. They're meant to be the same character, but different scales for close-ups or wide shots. It's very charming. That was something we stole. Gaynor Flynn

Fantastic Mr Fox screens from 1 Jan