Why did you want to do this book, particularly?

Wes Anderson: It was the first [Roald Dahl book] I ever owned and I particularly thought the digging was something nice for movies. I loved the drawings that were in the book I had. And I do love this character. Beyond that it was just one that hadn't been done, and it seemed like a great chance. I love stop-motion where the puppets have fur, and with all the animals I thought this would be a good opportunity to explore that.

You spent some time while you were writing in Roald Dahl's hometown, what was that like?

WA: The place where we went is called Gypsy House, which he bought later in his life, but it's where he wrote many of his best-known books. Mr. Fox was written there, certainly. We were interested in the idea that we wouldn't just base it on the book; we'd base it on him. He'd written memoirs for children -- which is an odd thing, not many people have written autobiographies meant for children -- so from that point of view we were always very aware of him and aware that kids reading his books didn't just know the books, they knew him. We tried to get as much of his personality into the character, and we also had his manuscripts. In fact, we had the manuscript for Fantastic Mr. Fox, which had a different ending which we used in the movie. That's a great luxury -- to be able to say, "Here's an idea we can use -- it's not in the book, but it's from him."

We came to set in April and we noticed you'd donated some of your suit fabric for Fox's costume -- did you identify with that character specifically?

WA: Not particularly. The reason I used the material from my suit was that I really liked it, and I thought he'd probably like it too. I just thought Corduroy might be good for Mr. Fox!

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You've blended your style of filmmaking with Dahl's style of storytelling -- did you find it was a comfortable fit?

WA: Yes, but for me I didn't, in advance, have an idea of how I expected it to turn out. I knew I wanted to do it in stop-motion and I knew I wanted the animals to have fur -- to not be Plasticine or something like that. I wanted it to be autumnal and originally I thought I wanted there to be mud everywhere and it wouldn't be very colourful. That stayed -- not the mud, but there's almost nothing blue or green in the movie. I thought it would be nice with this sort of handmade feeling. What it really ends up like is the result of a thousand little decisions rather than one overarching thing.

Me and the production designer, Nelson Lowry, tried to design things one way or another but what we figured out was that the more realistic we could make things the happier we were with them. If I was travelling I might see a building or something and I'd take a picture on my phone, send it to Nelson and we might change something about it but we tried to base it as much as we could on research and photos and things. The style is set by how authentic can we get it. How realistic can we get it to look with our resources in miniature, and that's the look of the movie, basically. Given that the grass is going to be made of towelling and the smoke will be cotton wool, that's the range, I guess, that we're working in.