Hasitha Fernando on the story behind Fantastic Mr. Fox as Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated Roald Dahl adaptation turns 15…
Many of Roald Dahl’s works have received their big screen treatment in the past but a vast majority of them were in the live-action form with the trifecta of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The Witches receiving the lions share of the high-praise. But this would all change with Wes Anderson’s take on Fantastic Mr. Fox, which amalgamated top-notch stop-motion artistry with some divine voice acting by an A-list cast. Join us as we delve into the film’s behind-the-scenes story as we celebrate its 15th anniversary…
Fantastic Mr. Fox was written during a very dark period of Roald Dahl’s life
British author Roald Dahl has singlehandedly crafted some of our childhood’s most beloved literary works since the 1940s. James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, George’s Marvelous Medicine, BFG and The Twits are some of his efforts that have gone on to gain immense popularity over the years. Many of Dahl’s books have been adapted to either films or TV shows due and the IPs have not lost their appeal even though they have been written over 80 years prior. The original story of Fantastic Mr. Fox was written during a very dark period of Dahl’s life where he had lost one of his five children to measles and also had to witness another of his brood suffer the consequences of a bad road traffic accident. This string of tragic incidents undoubtedly led Dahl to write a story portraying a father functioning as the protector in the story of Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Roald Dahl was one of Wes Anderson’s personal heroes
Through just a handful of films Wes Anderson has been able to establish himself as one of Hollywood’s more unique and creative voices lending credence to the wild possibilities that exist with auteur driven cinema. For the young filmmaker, Roald Dahl was one of the most inspiring and influential writers in his younger years and therefore he made it his mission to one day adapt one of his works as a feature film. But the story of how the book became a movie began much earlier when Joe Roth of Revolution Studios secured the film rights to Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2004.
A few years later, Wes Anderson signed on as director along with Henry Selick, who helmed the critically lauded A Nightmare Before Christmas. Selick had also worked with Anderson previously on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou as its animation director. Selick later departed the project in order to work on Neil Gaiman’s Coraline on February 2006 and this void was filled by the late Mark Gustafson who partnered with the inimitable Guillermo del Toro to craft the brilliant dark fantasy animated film Pinocchio in 2022.
The original story was tweaked for the feature film adaptation
With changes in creative teams and multiple delays the project left its home in Revolution Studios and got shifted to 20th Century Fox for the remainder of its production. Anderson felt that Dahl’s original story should be tweaked for its feature film adaptation and with the assistance of Frances Ha writer Noah Baumbach hammered out a screenplay at Gypsy House which is Dahl’s family home in Buckinghamshire. Anderson and Baumbach conceived new scenes that would function as the movie’s beginning and end, while retaining the novel’s second act in their story.
Roald Dahl’s house & hometown served as inspirations for the movie
During the process of creating the screenplay both Anderson and Baumbach resided in Roald Dahl’s family home which is located in the charming village of Greater Missenden in Buckinghamshire, England. This was where Dahl lived and worked during a greater part of his life and many of its picturesque locales and surroundings inspired the exterior seen in the movie and most of the interior environs were based upon the famous garden hut in which Dahl did most of his scribbling and the tree where the Fox family resides in the movie is based on a prominent beech tree situated in the Dahl property.
An impressive ensemble cast was assembled for the voice acting roles
To say, Fantastic Mr. Fox put together the most enviable bunch of Hollywood talent would be a monumental understatement. Along with George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Adrien Brody, Michael Gambon and Willem Dafoe, Anderson also included his regulars such as Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman to bring his beautiful vision to light. Incidentally the movie was George Clooney’s first involvement in an animated film whilst Meryl Streep had lent her voice talents for the 1975 independent animated feature Everybody Rides the Carousel and Willem Dafoe had worked on the Pixar comedy-drama Finding Nemo.
Unconventional recording methods were employed during the shoot
Wes Anderson has always been known to employ unconventional or unorthodox approaches when shooting his movies and Fantastic Mr. Fox was no different. Instead of recording the cast’s voice in a studio, which is how it’s usually done, Anderson chose to record the actor’s voice acting performances outside. During an interview the eccentric filmmaker shared his thoughts on why he chose that particular approach: “We went out in a forest, went in an attic, and went in a stable. We went underground for some things. There was a great spontaneity in the recordings because of that”. The recordings were concluded prior to any animation being done as well.
The movie’s soundtrack features an eclectic selection of songs
The original score for Fantastic Mr. Fox was composed by French musician Alexandre Desplat who had previously written music for The Golden Compass, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I and II. Desplat’s score for this movie received high-praise and went on to be nominated for Best Original Score at the Academy Awards and the BAFTAs. But in addition to Desplat’s stunning, offbeat score the flick also featured a fantastic soundtrack that included a selection of eclectic songs from The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Bobby Fuller Four, Georges Delerue, Burl Ives and other artists.
The “Whack-bat scene” was a last minute addition to the story
The hilarious “Whack-bat scene” which includes a “how to” sequence on how to play Whack-bat, was a last minute addition by Anderson to the movie. Once he had the initial idea in place, Anderson wrote it down on some hotel stationary before texting it to Owen Wilson who voices the coach in that sequence. This idea was then shared by Laika animation supervisor Brad Schiff, who was a huge sports aficionado, to design the nitty-gritties of the made-up sport which was more or less a hybrid of baseball, cricket and hurdles. Wilson and the other cast members recorded their lines during the process whilst exchanging their creative inputs with Anderson & co.
Critical acclaim & awards success
Fantastic Mr. Fox wasn’t a box-office success per se after raking in $46 million on a $40 million production budget but what it didn’t gain financially it certainly had from solid critic reviews. The flick ended up on multiple Best of the Year critic lists and as of writing boasts an impressive 93% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes based on 245 reviews and an average rating of 7.9/10. Acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert gave the movie an astounding three-and-a-half stars out of four penning that similar to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, children may find certain aspects of the movie scary or perplexing, which Ebert described as something of a positive in the context of the film. Film critic A.O Scott also had nothing but good things to say about Fantastic Mr. Fox elaborating: “In some ways this is (Wes Anderson’s) most fully realized and satisfying film. Once you adjust to its stop-and-start rhythms and its scruffy looks, you can appreciate its wit, its beauty and the sly gravity of its emotional undercurrents”.
Come awards season Fantastic Mr. Fox received multiple nominations in several areas at major awards ceremonies. At the Oscars and BAFTAs the movie received nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score whilst at the effort garnered a nomination in the Best Animated Feature category at the Golden Globes. At the Critics’ Choice Awards Anderson and Baumbach’s received a nomination with the duo winning at that year’s Annie Awards. The film’s success later spurred Anderson to take another stab at the stop-motion animation genre with 2018’s Isle of Dogs and certainly influenced its animation director Mark Gustafson to play an integral role in the award winning animated dark fantasy Pinocchio in 2022.
Amidst its stunning stop-motion wizardry, excellent voice acting and well-placed needle drops Fantastic Mr. Fox remains a cut above the ordinary due to its exploration of complex themes such as class struggles, social change, self-acceptance and existentialism in an effectively simple but impactful manner. Certainly one of the best Roald Dahl adaptations of all time.
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Hasitha Fernando is a part-time medical practitioner and full-time cinephile. Follow him on Twitter via @DoctorCinephile for regular updates on the world of entertainment.
