Isle of Dogs

Isle of Dogs (Japanese: 犬ヶ島, Hepburn: Inu ga Shima) is a 2018 adult stop-motion animated science fiction comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by Wes Anderson, narrated by Courtney B. Vance and starring an ensemble cast consisting of Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Kunichi Nomura, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe, Akira Ito, Greta Gerwig, Akira Takayama, Frances McDormand, F. Murray Abraham, Yojiro Noda, Fisher Stevens, Mari Natsuki, Nijiro Murakami, Yoko Ono, Harvey Keitel and Frank Wood. An American-German-British co-production, Isle of Dogs was produced by Studio Babelsberg and Indian Paintbrush in association with Anderson's own company American Empirical Pictures. This was Anderson's second stop-motion film, following Fantastic Mr. Fox. The film is set in the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki where Mayor Kenji Kobayashi has banished all dogs to Trash Island due to a canine influenza pandemic. Kobayashi's nephew Atari sets out to find his missing dog Spots with the help of a group of dogs led by stray dog Chief.

Anderson started developing the film in October 2015 using stop-motion animation, with a voice cast of Norton, Cranston and Balaban. It draws inspiration from films by Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, as well as the stop-motion animated holiday specials made by Rankin/Bass Productions, the 1982 animated film The Plague Dogs, and Disney's 101 Dalmatians. Production began in October 2016 at the 3 Mills Studios in East London. By December 2016, Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film, scheduling it for a 2018 release. It is the second animated film to be released by Fox Searchlight, seventeen years after Waking Life in 2001. It is the only 20th Century Fox Animation film to be released by Fox Searchlight.