From Clooney Studio (via Joblo)

The Fantastic Mr Fox In February, the Hollywood Reporter announced that George Clooney was "in negotiations" to voice Mr Fox, but there was no formal follow up to announce he'd signed on. With an increasing number of movie sites listing him in the cast, I contacted George's agent, Bryan Lourd. Bryan confirmed to me that George has signed on to the movie.

one step at a time I guess, but I'm still awaiting a more clear update on this subject. Horray sept 29th!

This is already on RA, but I thought I'd post it here.

From MTV:

Wes has confirmed that Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman are providing voices for the film.

He also says that they're going to start recording the lines soon, and then they'll start the physical production, which should take "a couple of years."

Then there's this: "“The settings will be very natural. We want to use real trees and real sand, but it’s all miniature."

How interesting, how bizarre.

In a bizarre moment yesterday my youngest cousin, aged 7, mentioned that his teacher was reading the book to his class. "Oh," I said, "that's being made into a movie." He got all excited. Then later on in the day I thought to myself, "Yeah, but this is Wes Anderson. Could I even take the kidlet to see it?"
Ha ha ha! Just kidding. But I'm sure it will have some sort of odd twist to it.

[The really odd part to the whole scenario was that I was in the front seat of the car explaining to my other cousin, aged 13, that I wanted him to see "Rushmore" when I heard the younger one mention the book. Cue "Twilight Zone" theme...]

Does anyone know if owen wilson is doing something in the film?

i was wondering the same. owen was in every wes films... he should be here, too...

imdb doesnt name owen in the fantastic mr fox page, but it's still pretty empty... i guess the full crew is not all defined yet...

...barely in rushmore, though he did co-write it.

yeah i mean he worked in every wes film, one way or another

today on http://marriedtothesea.com ....

From Times Online

Off-beat director, Wes Anderson, gives Dahl readers a 21st century fox

His recent films have been offbeat, melancholy comedies, but what Wes Anderson really wanted to do was bring his favourite Roald Dahl story from childhood to the big screen. After nearly a decade of planning, during which he made The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited, the American director has started work in London on an animated version of Fantastic Mr Fox, with George Clooney providing the voice of the eponymous hero.

Dahl’s classic tale was written in 1970 after he had made his name as a children’s writer with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. Aimed at younger readers, it pits the daring Mr Fox against three memorably grotesque farmers who are determined to put an end to his raids on their stock by shooting him or starving his family out of their den. “It was one of my favourite books as a child,” Anderson told The Times. “I have been trying to make this film for eight years.”

New characters and plotlines, including something resembling a raid scene, have been introduced to make the story into a feature-length film.

“There’s a whole new bit at the start and a new section at the end, but we’ve tried to do something that Roald Dahl would love,” Anderson, who is writing the script with Noah Baumbach, a director, said.

Amanda Conquy, who runs Roald Dahl’s literary estate, said that she and Felicity, the author’s widow, had no doubts that the pair had the right vision for the project.

“Whatever Wes does is interesting and has a definite point of view. He understands the humour of Dahl and the sweetness and slightly anarchic nature of this story,” Ms Conquy added.

I'm rather intrigued by the idea of a raid scene. We've heard/read before that Wes & Noah were using the book essentially as Act II, and that Acts I and III would be entirely original.

I keep forgetting to go back and actually reread this book. It was always my favorite Dahl story. Mostly because I liked foxes.

Interview with Jason Schwartzman

This is just a part of the article. You can read it all here

And didn’t you just do something with Bill Murray?
Yeah, I did The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Is that done?
Yeah. It was cool. Now it has to be animated. George Clooney and Bill Murray did their stuff separately from me, because I was on a press tour, so I had to do mine in London. There was a moment when it looked like George Clooney, Bill Murray and myself would come together to do some recording – but it didn’t come together.
I was set to do it in London over one day – a full day. I asked Wes [Anderson] whether we could put aside some time first to talk about the movie, my character, his motivation… and so on. He said ‘sure, we’ll be fine… we’ll rehearse first and then talk about those things later – way before we record anything’. So anyway, it got to Friday, the day we were recording, and again I said ‘can we talk about it?’ and he said ‘we’ll be fine, we’ll rehearse it… we have the whole day’. Anyway, it’s about 2 o’clock – bear in mind I have a dinner at 8 o’clock that night – when we go check out the puppets. 7 o’clock rolls around and we still haven’t recorded anything. He says ‘should we cancel it? It might seem a bit rushed now if we do it”, and I said ‘yeah, it’ll be too rushed – lets cancel it’. Thing is, he’d already paid the money for the studio. So, he says ‘Lets just go in there and mess around [anyway]’. And what did we do? We did the entire movie in 20 minutes! Every single take! It was so much fun.

How were the puppets?
So amazing - so great. It’s amazing to think that in this day and age, with the advances in technology and everything, when you do this kind of a movie, which is stop motion, you still have to click, or take your shot, and then move the puppet a little, click again, and so on… all with your hand. It’s hand-made. Amazing stuff.

20 minutes?? uh oh...

i trust it'll be all right.. wes is such a perfectionist,, even coming off darjeeling, i feel like (if necessary) he'd say, ehh, we need to get that line re-done..

Maybe Jason's part is small. Also he could be exaggerating. It'll be boss y'all. No worries.