Wes Anderson is returning to stop-motion animation. (His previous project working in the painstaking — but charming! — medium was Fantastic Mr. Fox.) Today, he announced in a video that his follow-up to The Grand Budapest Hotel will be called Isle of Dogs and will star: Frances McDormand, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Yoko Ono, Courtney B. Vance, Greta Gerwig, Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Koyu Rankin, Bill Murray, Akira Ito, Akira Takayama, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, and Liev Shreiber. That is, indeed, a lot of people, some of whom will be playing dogs. (A tiny preview of the movie that Anderson unveils reveals that we should indeed take the title literally; and, in fact, it was reported a while back that the film would be about a pack of dogs.)
Edward Norton pops in to declare his own casting announcement, noting that he’s playing “one of the lead dogs, actually” — named Rex. They then roll the brief — very brief — sneak preview of canine Norton.
Anderson then uses the video to announce a charity contest. In order to win the opportunity to voice a charmingly aestheticized Wes Anderson dog, people can donate a minimum of $10 to The Film Foundation — a charity started by Martin Scorsese and his friends/colleagues in 1990 to ensure, per Anderson, “the restoration of our whole planet’s shared movie heritage.”
Here’s the announcement: