Multiple Oscar-, BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winning filmmaker Wes Anderson will be adding animated elements to his upcoming live-action movies Asteroid City and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, both of which are coming out this year. In a recent interview about his work on Academy Award shortlisted stop-motion short Save Ralph, puppetmaker and founder of Arch Model Studio Andy Gent told Animation Scoop he has been working on both projects.
“We finished on French Dispatch and then I was working for maybe two years on Asteroid City,” Gent explained. “We’ve done a few sequences and lots of different techniques. We just finished the stop-motion part a couple months ago. We’ve been working for this last year on Henry Sugar. We just finished the last shot before Christmas. We’ve had a lot of fun working with Wes this last year. He’s kept us very, very busy on lots of different things… a lot of very challenging things as well.”
Gent, who worked on Anderson’s Oscar-nominated stop-motion features Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and Isle of Dogs (2018) as well as The French Dispatch (2020) and four-time Oscar winner The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), added that working with the director again has been “very good,” that Anderson has “been championing a lot of things” and that he himself was “super pleased to be challenged in a way to do something new and crazy, and more unbelievable than ever before.”
Asteroid City is an original romantic comedy-drama written by Anderson and frequent collaborator Roman Coppola, which will open in U.S. theaters through Focus Features on June 16. Boasting a rather large, star-powered ensemble cast (including Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Rupert Friend, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Hope Davis and Jeff Goldblum, to name a few), the pic is set in 1955 at a Junior Stargazer convention, which is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.
Based on a 1977 short story by Roald Dahl, The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar is a comedy-adventure told in three chapters, also written by Anderson. The anthology is strung together by Henry Sugar (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy gambler who gains the ability to “see without using his eyes” when he steals a mystical book. The film also stars Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Friend and Richard Ayoade, and will be released by Netflix in Fall 2023.
Gent’s past puppet crafting credits also include Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie, and Henry Selick’s Coraline.
[Source: Animation Scoop]
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