Moonrise Kingdom is the most recent movie from Wes Anderson and, while it is no earth-shaker in the entertainment stakes, it does once again showcase the impeccable aesthetic taste of its maker. Those who have seen the movie will know that six made-up novels are featured, as is a twinkly narrator played by Bob Balaban, and both of those appear in a new spin-off animated short.

In Moonrise Kingdom, painfully self-aware youngsters Sam and Suzy (played by Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) run away together – he from a scout camp headed by Ed Norton’s chain-smoking shorts-sporter, she from her maladroit folks (played by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand).

Carried with Suzy on this pubescent romantic flight are half-a-dozen books, made up solely for the purposes of the movie, and each coming complete with its own hand-crafted cover.

And to complement its Cannes-opening parent movie, Anderson has just put out a four-minute short film which features snippets of those books brought to animated life, in styles reflective of those eye-catching jackets. Anchoring proceedings is Bob Balaban, who fulfils the same function in Moonrise Kingdom.

Check it out for yourself, and yes, the dialogue in The Girl from Jupiter was lifted straight from the script for Prometheus.

For those already looking forward to the next full-length Anderson feature, the director has recently revealed a few titbits about it, saying that it is set in Europe, and will feature a “crazy” main character, who “has a personal mind-reader whose assistant is a teenager.”

Source: EW