Film Career
Wes’ first film, 1996’s Bottle Rocket was a crime caper focused on a group of young Texans aspiring to achieve major heists. While the film did not do well commercially, critically it was acclaimed, with Martin Scorsese naming Bottle Rocket one of his favorite films of the 1990s. Anderson’s next film, Rushmore, a quirky comedy about a high school student's crush on an elementary school teacher, was produced on a larger scale and was released to critical acclaim. Its success helped to both launch the career of Anderson as well as to popularize star Bill Murray as an independent cinema actor. Murray has since appeared in every Anderson film to date. In 2000, filmmaker Martin Scorsese praised Bottle Rocket and Rushmore in an Esquire magazine article about Anderson.
The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson’s next comedy-drama film about a successful artistic New York City family and its ostracized patriarch, represented Anderson's greatest success to date. Earning more than $50 million in domestic box office receipts, the film was nominated for an Academy Award and ranked by an Empire poll as the 159th greatest film ever made.
Anderson's next feature, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, about a Jacques Cousteau-esque documentary filmmaker played by Murray, serves as a classic example of Anderson's style but its critical reception was less favorable than his previous films and its box office did not match the heights of The Royal Tenenbaums. In September 2006, following the disappointing commercial and critical reception of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen released a tongue-in-cheek "letter of intervention" of Anderson's artistic "malaise." Proclaiming themselves to be fans of "World Cinema" and Anderson in particular, they offered Anderson their soundtrack services for his The Darjeeling Limited, including lyrics for a title track.
Anderson's next film, Darjeeling Limited, about three emotionally distant brothers traveling together on a train in India, reflected the more dramatic tone of The Royal Tennenbaums but faced similar criticisms to The Life Aquatic. Anderson has acknowledged that he went to India to film the 2007 movie, partly as a tribute to the legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, whose "films have also inspired all my other movies in different ways" (the film is dedicated to him). The films starred Anderson staples Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson in addition to Adrien Brody and the script was co-written by Anderson, Schwartzman and Roman Coppola.
In 2008, Wes Anderson was hired to write the screenplay of the American adaptation of My Best Friend, a French film, for producer Brian Grazer, Anderson's first draft was titled "The Rosenthaler Suite".
Anderson's stop-motion animation adaptation of the Roald Dahl book Fantastic Mr. Fox was released in 2009. Although the film did not earn much more than its production budget, the film was highly praised and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Following the critical success of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson made perhaps his best received film to date, Moonrise Kingdom.
Wes Anderson's next film will be entitled The Grand Budapest Hotel which will star Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law, and Saoirse Ronan, along with his regular collaborators Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman. Anderson has stated that it will take place in Europe in the late 1920s.
Wes Anderson has launched the acting careers of such stars as Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Matthew Gray Gubler, and Jason Schwartzman.
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