is a 2018 stop-motion animated science fiction comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by Wes Anderson, narrated by Courtney B. Vance and starring an ensemble cast consisting of Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Kunichi Nomura, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe, Akira Ito, Greta Gerwig, Akira Takayama, Frances McDormand, F. Murray Abraham, Yojiro Noda, Fisher Stevens, Mari Natsuki, Nijiro Murakami, Yoko Ono, Harvey Keitel and Frank Wood. An American-German-British co-production, Isle of Dogs was produced by Studio Babelsberg and Indian Paintbrush in association with Anderson's own company American Empirical Pictures. This was Anderson's second stop-motion film, following Fantastic Mr. Fox. The film is set in the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki where Mayor Kenji Kobayashi has banished all dogs to Trash Island due to a canine influenza pandemic. Kobayashi's nephew Atari sets out to find his missing dog Spots with the help of a group of dogs led by stray dog Chief.

Anderson started developing the film in October 2015 using stop-motion animation, with a voice cast of Norton, Cranston and Balaban. It draws inspiration from films by Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, as well as the stop-motion animated holiday specials made by Rankin/Bass Productions, the 1982 animated film The Plague Dogs, and Disney's 101 Dalmatians. Production began in October 2016 at the 3 Mills Studios in East London. By December 2016, Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film, scheduling it for a 2018 release. It is the second animated film to be released by Fox Searchlight, seventeen years after Waking Life in 2001. It is the only 20th Century Fox Animation film to be released by Fox Searchlight.

Isle of Dogs opened the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, where Anderson was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director. It was given a limited release in the United States on March 23, 2018, and went on wide release on April 13. It grossed nearly $73 million worldwide, and received critical acclaim for its animation, story, musical score, and deadpan humor, along with criticism for its portrayal of Japanese people and culture. The film received two nominations at the 91st Academy Awards, for Best Animated Feature and Best Score.

Plot A thousand years ago, dogs were free to roam as they pleased. However, the cat-supremacist Kobayashi Dynasty declared war on dogs, seeking to eradicate them. A child warrior sympathetic towards the threatened dogs decapitated the head of the Kobayashi Clan, ending the war, and was immortalized as the Boy Samurai of Legend.

In 2038, an outbreak of canine flu spreads throughout the Japanese city of Megasaki. The city's authoritarian mayor, Kenji Kobayashi, ratifies an official decree banishing all dogs to Trash Island, despite the insistence of Professor Watanabe, the mayor's political opponent, that he is close to creating a cure. The first deported canine is a white and black-spotted male dog named Spots Kobayashi, who served as the bodyguard of 12-year-old orphan Atari Kobayashi, the mayor's distant nephew and ward.

Six months later, Atari hijacks a plane and flies it to Trash Island, now nicknamed "the Isle of Dogs", to search for Spots. After crash-landing, Atari is rescued by a dog pack ostensibly led by an all-black canine named Chief, a lifelong stray, along with Rex, Boss, Duke, and King. With their help, Atari finds a locked cage that apparently contains Spots' skeleton, but they realize it is not him. They then fend off a rescue team sent by Mayor Kobayashi to retrieve Atari. Chief initially declines to continue helping Atari find Spots, but is convinced by Nutmeg, a female ex-show dog whom Chief is smitten with. The pack seeks advice from sage-like dogs Jupiter and Oracle, who surmise that Spots might be held captive by an isolated tribe of dogs rumored to be cannibals.

Meanwhile, Watanabe finally develops a successful serum and shows the results to Kobayashi, who merely dismisses him. By order of the mayor's hatchet man Major Domo, the professor is placed under house arrest and assassinated with poisoned sushi. Tracy Walker, an American exchange student, member of a pro-dog activist group and Nutmeg's owner, suspects a conspiracy and begins to investigate, in the process developing feelings for Atari. Kobayashi and his political party are revealed to be responsible for the dog flu outbreak and aim to succeed at exterminating dogs where Kobayashi's ancestors failed.

During their journey to the dog tribe, Chief and Atari are separated from the others. Atari gives Chief a bath, revealing his white and black-spotted coat and thus his striking resemblance to Spots. The two bond and rejoin the rest of the pack. Another rescue team attacks them, but they are saved by Spots and the dog tribe. Spots confirms that he is Chief's older brother and that he was rescued by the tribe, who were test subjects from an abandoned secret lab. Spots became their leader and mated with a female tribe member named Peppermint, who is pregnant with their first litter. Because of these new responsibilities, Spots requests Atari replace him as his bodyguard with Chief; initially hesitant, both he and Atari accept. Word reaches the dog tribe that Kobayashi plans to euthanize all dogs with poison gas; Atari and the dogs build boats to return to Megasaki. Meanwhile, Tracy confronts Watanabe's colleague Yoko Ono, who confirms Tracy's conspiracy theories and gives her the last vial of serum.

At his re-election ceremony, Kobayashi prepares to give the extermination order when Tracy and the activist group interrupt, presenting evidence of his corruption. Kobayashi proceeds to deport Tracy, but before he can do so, Atari and the dogs arrive. They confirm that the serum works by testing it on Chief, curing him. Atari addresses the crowd and recites a haiku he wrote and dedicated to Kobayashi, rekindling the sympathy that once existed between dogs and humans. Initially enraged by his nephew's rebellion, Mayor Kobayashi suffers an epiphany at his words (instantly reminded of the legend of the Boy Samurai) before shamefully confessing all his corruption and officially repeals the dog banishment decree. Enraged, Major Domo tries to initiate the extermination himself, but his plans are thwarted by the dogs and the activist group. In the chaos, Atari and Spots are wounded and taken to a hospital, where a repentant Kobayashi donates one of his kidneys to save his nephew. Atari becomes the new mayor of Megasaki after Kobayashi's crimes render him ineligible to hold office.

One month later, Atari has had all dogs reintegrated into society and cured of the dog flu; while Kobayashi, Major Domo, and their co-conspirators are all sent to jail with Major Domo soon to get a death sentence. Chief's pack dogs are all back with their owners: Boss returns to being the mascot of the Dragons' baseball team (inferred that the coach owns him), King has returned to being a dog food commercial star and lives with a couple with their 3 children and has a big supply of dog food and puppy snaps, Duke lives with a large family who is seen watching one of King's commercials on TV, and Rex is owned by an elderly female librarian and is shown by her in the library with his own thick mat. Atari and Tracy become a couple, while Chief and Nutmeg become their bodyguard dogs. Meanwhile, Spots, having survived his injuries, raises his litter with Peppermint under the care of a Shinto priest.

Cast

Production Development

In October 2015, Wes Anderson, who had previously directed the animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox, announced he would be returning to the medium with "a film about dogs" starring Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston and Bob Balaban. Anderson has said that he was inspired by seeing a road sign for the Isle of Dogs in England while Fantastic Mr. Fox was in development. Anderson said that the film was influenced by the films of Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, as well as the stop-motion animated holiday specials made by Rankin/Bass Productions, the 1982 animated film The Plague Dogs, and Disney's 101 Dalmatians.

Filming Production began in October 2016 at the 3 Mills Studios in East London.

About 20,000 faces and 1,105 animatable puppets were crafted by "12 sculptors working six days a week" for the film; 2,000 more puppets were made for background characters. The detailed puppets of the main characters typically took 2–3 months to create.Murphy, Jackson. "INTERVIEW with 'Isle Of Dogs' Stop-Mo Model Maker Andy Gent." Animation Scoop. 29 October 2018. 29 October 2018. There was very little CG used, it only being used to duplicate audience members, or using green screens for actions that could not be filmed at the same time. For the effects, over 200 detailed, hand-made settings were made. The animation department included a number of people who had worked on Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Virtual reality Concurrently with the film, Félix and Paul Studios and FoxNext VR Studio collaborated on Isle of Dogs: Behind the Scenes (in Virtual Reality), an immersive video film that places the viewer directly inside the animated world."These VR masters are bringing Wes Anderson's vision to life — and changing how we experience movies" . CBC Arts, January 22, 2018. The virtual reality film was released on the Google Pixel platform."Wes Anderson's 'Isle of Dogs' VR mock-doc is live on Pixel phones" . Engadget, February 16, 2018.

Music

The film's score was composed by Alexandre Desplat, who had previously worked with Wes Anderson on Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. The soundtrack also features various original and selected songs from a variety of musicians, mainly from Japan. Some songs had origins in classic Japanese cinema such as the Akira Kurosawa films Drunken Angel (1948) and Seven Samurai (1954). The soundtrack comprises 22 tracks in total, 15 of which were composed by Desplat.

Release On December 23, 2016, Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film, with plans for a 2018 release.

The film premiered as the opening film of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival on February 15, 2018, and had its North American premiere as the closing film of the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, on March 17, 2018. Isle of Dogs began a limited release in the U.S. on March 23, 2018. It was released nationwide in the United States on April 13, 2018.

Box office

In its first weekend of limited release, the film made $1.57 million from 27 theaters (an average of $58,148 per venue). It was the best per-theater average of 2018 until it was overtaken by Eighth Grade in July. Sixty percent of its audience was under the age of 30. In its second weekend, the film made $2.8 million from 165 theaters (an increase of 74%), finishing 11th. The film entered the top 10 in its third weekend, making $4.6 million from 554 theaters. The film expanded to 1,939 theaters the following week and made $5.4 million, finishing seventh at the box office.

Home media Isle of Dogs was released digitally on June 26, 2018, and on DVD and Blu-ray on July 17, 2018.

On streaming, Isle of Dogs was added on Disney+ in the US and Canada on January 15, 2021. It was added to the UK and Australian versions on 17 September 2021.

The film was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection on September 30, 2025, as part of the ten film collection The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years and as a standalone disc.

Reception Critical response