Fantastic Mr. Fox has been posted, the animated adaptation of the famous Roald Dahl book from Royal Tenenbaums and Darjeeling Limited director Wes Anderson.

Although it is just the one picture, we are permitted a glimpse of Mr. Fox himself (whose voice will be provided courtesy of George Clooney), Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep lending her pipes to the part), and some furry little friends. The lushness of the image alludes to a textural warmth in the movie’s visualisation, with an attendant richness of detail evident in the depicted characters (nice PJ’s).

In addition to the distinguished likes of Clooney and Streep, vocal duties on the movie are also the preserve of long-time Anderson cohorts Angelica Houston, Owen Wilson and Bill Murray as Badger. The story itself revolves around Mr. Fox and his efforts to elude capture at the hands of dim-witted farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean, with the original tome offering Anderson plenty of scope for comic set-pieces.

Released in the autumn, Fantastic Mr. Fox has been scripted by Anderson in tandem with Squid and the Whale writer-director Noah Baumbach, and a promising omen for their new movie is surely that the best bits in the duo’s prior collaboration, The Life Aquatic, were the superbly animated sequences of undersea lifeforms.

Anderson’s last couple of films have split critics and audiences alike, with admirers of his idiosyncratic style counterpointed by those who feel his aesthetic choices and narrative development have become ingrained to almost the point of self-parody. Personally, I lean more towards the former perspective, although it will be interesting to see if the fusion of the Anderson movie-making model with an already-known text will signal a significant change in tone for the director, or whether Mr. Fox will emerge very much in the mould of such Anderson luminaries as Max Fischer and Steve Zissou.

Sources: JoBlo, Coming Soon