Wes Anderson surprised today with the announcement of the start of production on his next film, a stop-motion animated pic he’s calling Isle Of Dogs. The announcement came in a video posted to Vimeo, in which he unveiled a partnership with crowdfunding service CrowdRise for a raffle to benefit the film restoration organization Film Foundation. One raffle winner — tickets go for $10 a pop — will be picked to visit the England set and potentially voice a dog in the film.
Along with the raffle announcement, Anderson showed off a brief clip from the film that features what he says is a dog named Rex, to be voiced by Edward Norton (though the clip has no dialogue). And speaking of cast, Isle Of Dogs is packed with all-stars, with Norton joined by Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, F Murray Abraham, Tilda Swinton, Kunichi Nomura, Harvey Keitel, Akira Ito, Akira Takayama, Koyu Rankin, Yoko Ono, Courtney B. Vance, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Bob Balaban and Liev Schrieber.
No word on when the film is planned for release, or when the first trailer will be hitting the Internet.
Isle Of Dogs is Anderson’s second animated film, following his 2009 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, which starred George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Jason Schwarztman and featured music by Pulp front man Jarvis Cocker and frequent Anderson collaborator French composer Alexandre Desplat.
