Development on the project began in 2004 as a collaboration between Anderson andHenry Selick underRevolution Studios; by 2007, Revolution and Selick left for other projects. Work onFantastic Mr. Fox was moved to20th Century Fox, where production began in 2007 on Stage C of3 Mills Studios in London. In addition to an original score byAlexandre Desplat, the soundtrack includes several songs from other artists.
Fantastic Mr. Fox premiered as the opening film of the 53rdBFI London Film Festival on October 14, 2009, and was released in the United Kingdom on October 23 and United States on November 13, to critical acclaim, with praise for its humor, stop-motion animation and Anderson's direction. However, it underperformed at the box office, grossing $58.1 million against a $40 million budget. The film receivedAcademy Award nominations forBest Animated Feature andBest Original Score, but lost both toUp. It is now considered to be among the best animated films of the 21st century.
While raiding Berk'sSquab Farm, Mr. Fox and his wife, Felicity, are caught in a trap. Felicity reveals her pregnancy to her husband and makes her husband promise to find a safer job. Twelve fox-years later, the Foxes and their son, Ash, are living in a hole. Ignoring his lawyer Clive Badger's warnings, Mr. Fox moves them into a better home inside a tree, perilously close to the operations of three notorious farmers: Walt Boggis, Nate Bunce, and Frank Bean.
Soon after the Foxes move in, Felicity's nephew Kristofferson Silverfox comes to live with them due to his father receiving long-term treatment for doublepneumonia. Longing for his days as a thief, Mr. Fox and his opossum friend Kylie steal poultry and cider from Boggis, Bunce, and Bean's farms. Angered by the raids, the farmers shoot off Mr. Fox's tail and demolish his home, forcing the Foxes underground. The group encounters Badger and many other animals whose homes the farmers have destroyed. As the animals begin fearing starvation, Mr. Fox leads them on a digging expedition to tunnel to the three farms, stealing all of their prized goods.
Discovering that Mr. Fox has stolen their goods, the farmers and the fire chief flood the animals' tunnel network with some of Bean'scider, washing them out into the sewers. Ash and Kristofferson slip away from the celebration and return to Bean's farm, intending to reclaim the missing tail, but Bean's wife captures Kristofferson. Realizing that the farmers plan to use Kristofferson to lure him into an ambush, Mr. Fox heads to the surface to surrender but returns when Rat, Bean's violent security guard, confronts the animals and attacks Ash and Felicity. A fight between Mr. Fox and Rat results in the latter being pushed into a generator, electrocuting him. Before dying, Rat reveals that Kristofferson is being held in an attic in Bean Annex, prompting Mr. Fox to organize a rescue mission.
Mr. Fox asks the farmers for a meeting inPaddington near the sewer hub, offering to surrender himself on the condition that the farmers free Kristofferson and spare the other animals. The farmers prepare an ambush, but the animals, anticipating it, launch a counterattack that allows Mr. Fox, Ash, and Kylie to enter Bean Annex undetected. Ash frees Kristofferson and impresses his father and the group by braving enemy fire to release arabidbeagle to keep the farmers at bay. The animal snatches the fox tail from Mr. Bean and rips it apart. Kristofferson picks up the torn tail as the group escapes back to the sewers.
As the farmers wait for the animals to come out of the manhole, the animals settle into their new homes in the sewers, inviting any other animals to join them. Soon afterward, Fox (sporting the tail as a clip-on) raids a supermarket owned by the farmers, where Felicity reveals her upcoming pregnancy as the animals dance in the aisle, celebrating their abundant new food source.
The story the novel covers would amount to the second act of the film. Anderson added new scenes to serve for the film's beginning and end.[12] The new scenes precede Mr. Fox's plan to steal from the three farmers and follow the farmers bulldozing of the hill, beginning with the flooding of the tunnel. Selick left the project, to work on theNeil Gaiman storyCoraline in February 2006.[13] He was replaced byMark Gustafson.[14]20th Century Fox Animation became the project's home in October 2006 after Revolution left for other projects.[15][16][17]
By September 2007, voice work on the film began.[18]Anderson chose to record the voices outside rather than in a studio: "We went out in a forest, went in an attic, and went in a stable. We went underground for some things. There was a great spontaneity in the recordings because of that".[14] The voices were recorded before any animation was done.[19]
Anderson, regarding the production design, said his intention was to use real trees and sand for the sets, "but it's all miniature".[18]Great Missenden, where Roald Dahl lived, has a major influence on the film's look.[10] The film mixes several forms of animation but consists primarily ofstop motion.[20] Animation took place in London,[14] on Stage C at3 Mills Studios, and the puppets were created by Mackinnon & Saunders,[21] with Anderson directing the crew, many of whom animatedTim Burton'sCorpse Bride.[22] Selick, who kept in contact with Anderson, said the director would act out scenes while in Paris and send them to Gustafson and the animators viaiPhone.[23] To capture an autumnal aesthetic, there is no frame in the film that lacks the colororange.[24]
The three farmers, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, represent the wealthy in society.[30] Mr. Fox has a desperate desire forvalidation from others, as he battles his own internal insecurities.[31] Mr. Fox exhibitsnarcissism and a fear of acceptingdefeat, although the film demonstrates thatfailure is not a bad thing, despite the destruction of his home.[28] The farmers' attacks on the animals is due to Mr. Fox's narcissism and his reliance onburglary.[30]
Unlike in the book, Mr. Fox possessesself-consciousness and has anexistential crisis in the film.[32] Mr. Fox's existential crisis is what drives him to purchase a newer house and regress to his criminal habits in order to obtain better food for his family. However, only by the end of the film he realizes that hispride had gotten in the way, where he put his loved ones in danger, and this therefore becomes themoral of the story; to prohibit self-pride getting in the way of loved ones.[33]
The film depict issues ofclass struggle, as Mr. Fox feels poor and is then determined to take on the affluent, avaricious farmers. In retaliation to Mr. Fox'sthievery of produce, the farmers destroy nearly everything, killing almost every animal in town (as a means ofcollective punishment), with others beingdisplaced. In the end, however, it is thelower class (or the unfortunate and feeble) animals who are the champions and are able to outwit the rich, vindictive farmers.[34] Moreover,The Jewish Chronicle pointed out similarities to theGaza–Israel conflict during the farmer's siege of the hill.[35]
The film focuses on what it means to be a father and husband; Mr. Fox breaks his promise made to his wife by continuing to steal, and therefore turns everyone's lives upside down: the situation compels him to look at himself and to acknowledge who he is.[34]
Many of the qualities that Mr. Fox feels makes him great are linked with hismasculinity. Although it is actually set in the mid-to-late 2000s, the film's style and aesthetic is anachronistically 1970s, a period whenmen were taught that they should be strong and confident earners for the family. Mr. Fox's failure halfway through the film is due to himnot achieving sufficiently as a man, even though his wife says that they were "poor but happy". As ahousewife, Mrs. Fox's main contribution to the film's plot is pressing Mr. Fox to evaluate the impact of hisrecklessness; she is stereotyped as a "proper woman", a notion commonly held in the 1970s.[33]
Fox'smisfit son Ash is considered "different", despite his efforts to be athletic like his father. He walks in aneffeminate way and has markings that resembleeyeliner, unlike other male characters in the film – a contrast in style that could imply that he isgay.[33]
Throughout the film, the animal protagonists are indenial about being "wild animals", even though the way they interact and fight showcase that they are wild. Mr. Fox and Kylie discuss how they are afraid of wolves, an example of a wild animal;[27] however, after coming into contact with a wolf in the film's ending, they appreciate the wolf's beauty and their similarities with them. Mr. Fox then acknowledges the idea ofliving underground since he accepts himself to be a wild animal with asimple life.[28]
The film had its world premiere as the opening film of the 53rdBFI London Film Festival on October 14, 2009.[36]20th Century Fox released it theatrically in the United Kingdom on October 23 and the United States on November 13.
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 93% based on 245 reviews and an average rating of 7.90/10. The site's consensus states: "Fantastic Mr. Fox is a delightfully funny feast for the eyes with multi-generational appeal – and it shows Wes Anderson has a knack for animation".[42] The film also became the second highest-rated animated film in 2009 on the site, behindUp. OnMetacritic, it has aweighted average score of 83 out of 100 based on 34 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[43] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[44]
Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four, writing that, likeWilly Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, children may find some aspects of the film perplexing or scary, which he considered a positive element to a children's film.[45] Devin D. O'Leary ofWeekly Alibi called it "a one-of-a-kind family classic."[46]
In some ways (Wes Anderson's) most fully realized and satisfying film. Once you adjust to its stop-and-start rhythms and its scruffy looks, you can appreciate its wit, its beauty and the sly gravity of its emotional undercurrents. The work done by the animation director, Mark Gustafson, by the director of photography, Tristan Oliver, and by the production designer, Nelson Lowry, shows amazing ingenuity and skill, and the music (byAlexandre Desplat, with the usual shuffle of well-chosen pop tunes, famous and obscure) is both eccentric and just right.[47]
According toTime, the film is "both a delightful amusement and a distillation of the filmmaker's essential playfulness"[48] and was one of the ten best films of the year.[49]Cosmo Landesman ofThe Sunday Times said "having a quirkyauteur like Anderson make a children's film is a bit likeDavid Byrne, ofTalking Heads, recording an album ofnursery rhymes produced byBrian Eno". According to Landesman:
In style and sensibility, this is really a Wes Anderson film, with little Dahl. It's missing the darker elements that characterize Dahl's books. There you find the whiff of something nasty: child abuse, violence, misogyny. Gone, too, is any sense of danger. Even the farmers, who are made to look a touch evil, don't seem capable of it. We never feel the tension of watching the Fox family facing real peril. The film certainly has Americanized Dahl's story, and I don't mean the fact that the good animals have American accents and the baddies have British ones. It offers yet another celebration of difference and a lesson on the importance of being yourself. But it does leave you thinking: isn't it time that children's films put children first?[50]
Anderson injects such charm and wit, such personality and nostalgia—evident in the old-school animation, storybook settings and pitch-perfect use ofBurl Ives—that it's easy to forgive his self-conscious touches.[51]
Self-consciously quirky movie that manages to be twee and ultra-hip at the same time, it qualifies as yet another wry, carefully composed bibelot in the cabinet of curios that defines the Anderson oeuvre.[52]
Peter Howell from theToronto Star stated:
In an age when everything seems digital, computer-driven and as fake as instant coffee, more and more artists (Spike Jonze andJohn Lasseter among them) are embracing the old ways of vinyl records, hand-drawn cartoons and painstaking stop-motion character movements.[53]
In 2011,Richard Corliss ofTime magazine named it one of "The 25 All-Time Best Animated Films".[54]
In 2025, the film ranked number 65 on the "Readers' Choice" edition ofThe New York Times' list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century" and number 88 onRolling Stone's list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century."[55][56]
After giving his acceptance speech, the audio of the speech was used in a short animation of Anderson's character (Weasel) giving the speech, animated by Payton Curtis, a key stop-motion animator on the film.[63]
A mobile game based on the movie was released foriPhone.[64] In the game, the player controls Mr. Fox in various topdown accelerometer-controlled levels and avoids obstacles in the path.[64]
^Debruge, Peter (July 30, 2008)."Vanessa Morrison".Variety.Archived from the original on February 16, 2022. RetrievedFebruary 16, 2022.
^Brody, Richard (November 2, 2009)."Wild, Wild Wes".The New Yorker.Archived from the original on March 7, 2014. RetrievedMarch 14, 2022.And doing it on the industrial scale required for a studio motion picture—this one is being produced by Twentieth Century Fox Animation—is a gigantic undertaking.
