Wes Anderson’s New ‘Isle of Dogs’ Film Looks Like Nothing We’ve Ever Seen Before

Director Wes Anderson has a reputation for his eccentric yet charming style of filmmaking evidenced by the likes of Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, but his latest feature, Isle of Dogs, looks unconventional even by his standards.

The trailer for Isle of Dogs premiered Thursday, depicting a dystopian future in Japan in which pups are banished to an island made of trash due to their rampant overpopulation and tendency to spread canine flu.

The stop-motion animated film will tell the story of a young boy trying to track down his dog Spots on the garbage island with the help of five other exiled hounds. “We’ll find him. Wherever he is. If he’s alive. We’ll find your dog,” the dogs reassure the 12-year-old.

The all-star cast will feature the voices of Anderson’s go-to actors, such as Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Tilda Swinton and Edward Norton, as well as Bryan Cranston, Greta Gerwig, Courtney B. Vance, Scarlett Johansson and Yoko Ono.

Anderson told an audience at an Arte Cinéma talk in March that “the new film is really less influenced by stop-motion movies than it is by Akira Kurosawa,” referring to the legendary Japanese film director. Kurosawa often indulged in showcasing violence and death in his films, so it will be interesting to see if Isle of Dogs is marketed as a family-friendly film like most animated features.

This isn’t Anderson’s first dive into stop-motion animated filmmaking — the director helmed the PG-rated Fantastic Mr. Fox back in 2009.

Isle of Dogs arrives in theaters March 23, 2018.