Wes Anderson Loved "Fantastic Mr. Fox" Book as Child

Director Wes Anderson is known for more of his offbeat tragic comedies, such as "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Darjeeling Limited," but with the release of "Fantastic Mr. Fox" comes his first animated movie.

Anderson received a copy of Roald Dahl's book over three decades ago, and adapted the children's story into an animated movie using stop-motion techniques. Stop-motion is a process by which everything in the movie is handmade, and the characters are brought to life using frame-by-frame manipulation. Anderson used a few stop-motion sequences in his film, "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou."

In the lead role of Mr. Fox is Oscar-winner George Clooney. Playing his wife and son are Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman, and other voices include those of Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, and Owen Wilson.

Anderson had the cast record their dialogue at a Connecticut farm so that they could act out the scenes while recording them as though it were a radio play. "If a scene required us to dig, we all got on our hands and knees and dug in the ground," Schwartzman says about the recording process.

Anderson's adaptation of the book still takes place in the English countryside and with English farmers; however, the animals are all American. "We decided to make the animals Americans because we felt we wrote funnier, better dialogue for Americans," Anderson said.

"Fantastic Mr. Fox" is in theaters now.