Wes Anderson Isn’t Done Making Animated Films, but Does Find It ‘Slightly Overwhelming’
Harrison Richlin
Though Wes Anderson has only made two fully stop-motion animated feature films — “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Isle of Dogs” — almost all of his films dating as far back as “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” have featured some element of animation. Whether it be a full sequence designed to look like classic French bandes dessinées in “The French Dispatch” or the quirky alien featured in “Asteroid City,” Anderson has come to love animation despite not having any initial interest in it. As such, he was invited to take part in a masterclass held at last year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, parts of which were recently published in The Hollywood Reporter.
“It’s a sort of giant, slightly overwhelming thing,” Anderson said of the practice of animation, particularly stop-motion, “but it’s very fun.”
While many have come to love Anderson through his animated work, he still considers himself a filmmaker above an animator and, in fact, never saw himself working in animation outside of using it as a tool for his live-action films.
“I didn’t have any real ambition to do an animated movie until I’d made a few live-action movies. It was something I sort of found my way into,” Anderson said. Even so, he still believes he has more stories to tell in this form. He added later, “I definitely would like to do another.”
This being said, Anderson knows at this point to expect a laborious process he doesn’t always have control over — a fact which often keeps him from wanting to get back in the animation saddle.
“The thing that happens is […] by the time you finish a phase of what you’re doing, you’re very happy to move on. You don’t usually say, ‘I’d like to spend another year in the cutting room,’” he said at Annecy. “I love the experience of doing a stop-motion movie. Each time, by the time I’ve finished it, I want to go off and do a live-action movie.”
For now, Anderson is busy at work editing his latest live-action film, “The Phoenician Scheme.” Featured as part of IndieWire’s Most Anticipated Releases of 2025, the espionage thriller is set to star Anderson regulars Benicio del Toro, Rupert Friend, Willem Dafoe, Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Scarlett Johansson, as well as newcomers Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Mia Threapleton, Aysha Joy Samuel, Mohamed Chahrour, Imad Mardnli and Tonio Arango. It will mark the first feature of Anderson’s not to be shot by cinematographer Robert Yeoman, with Bruno Delbonnel stepping in instead.
