Wes Anderson released a short animated companion piece to his new film Moonrise Kingdom this week. In the film 12-year-old Suzy (Kara Hayward) carries with her a collection of six (fictitious) books from which she used to read to her younger brothers before running away with Sam (Jared Gilman) on the adventure that guides the rest of the film.
Those books she kept with her and even reads to Sam later in the film and now she reads them for us with accompanying animation and narration by Bob Balaban.
Anderson considered animating the stories for the film, but ultimately decided to hold on the characters’ faces during these scenes, but after the film was made he decided to go back and animate a short passage from each anyway.
Anderson told Entertainment Weekly, “I wrote passages for the other books that didn’t have any text [read aloud in the film], and we animated that too. So we now have this piece where our narrator, Bob Balaban’s character, takes us through these little sections of each of these books.”
The books include “The Return of Auntie Lorraine”, “The Disappearance of the 6th Grade”, “The Light of Seven Matchsticks”, “The Girl from Jupiter”, “The Francine Odysseys” and “Shelly and the Secret Universe”.
The jacket art was created by David Hyde Costello, Juman Malouf, Sandro Kopp, Eric Anderson, Andrea Dopaso and Kevin Hooyman.
Watch the video HERE.