Wes Anderson’s MOONRISE KINGDOM to Open Cannes 2012

Surprise (or not) Wes Anderson‘s Moonrise Kingdom will have that honor to open the 65th Cannes Film Festival. And it’s official.

Cannes delegate general Thierry Fremaux selected Anderson’s movie for the fest’s prestigious opening-night on May 16th, 2012.

It’s still unclear whether it will play In or Out of competition but with the Cannes Film Festival now just two months away we’ll soon have that info too.

The director has actually never been to Cannes to a show a film.

So, it marks the first Anderson’s premiere at the Cannes and the seventh consecutive English language film which opens the festival – Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris last year, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, Pete Docter’s Up, Fernando Meirelles’s Blindness, Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights and Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code in 2006.

And here’s what Fremaux had to say:

“Wes Anderson is one of the rising powers of American cinema, to which he brings a highly personal touch, particularly in ‘Moonrise Kingdom,’ which once again is a testimony to the creative freedom in which he continues to evolve. Sensitive and independent, this admirer of Fellini and Renoir is also in his own right a brilliant and inventive filmmaker.”

Moonrise Kingdom, starring Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, is set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, and tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness.

Gilman and Hayward play the young couple, while Willis is the town sheriff. Norton stars as a camp leader while Murray and McDormand portray the young girl’s parents.

In case you forgot, the Cannes 2012 festival runs from May 16-27 and Moonrise Kingdom opens US theaters on May 25th, 2012.