The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is Wes Anderson's fourth feature length film and was released in the U.S. on December 25, 2004. It was written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach and was filmed in and around Naples, Rome and the Italian Riviera. The offbeat comedy stars Bill Murray as Steve Zissou, an eccentric oceanographer. In this ensemble cast, Steve Zissou sets out to exact revenge on the "jaguar shark" that ate his partner Esteban. Murray's character is both a parody of and homage to Jacques-Yves Cousteau, to whom the film is dedicated.

It was released May 10, 2005, on DVD as part of The Criterion Collection.

Steve Zissou, sea-film auteur a la Jacques Cousteau, has reason to be melancholy: his partner has been eaten, perhaps by a mythic jaguar shark, his wife may be taking up with her ex-husband, a young man appears claiming Steve is his father (Steve hates fathers), his most recent films have tanked, he's having trouble raising money for his venture to revenge his partner, and he's attracted to a pregnant reporter who prefers the pretender. At sea, in pursuit of the shark, will he escape pirates and mutiny, forge the bonds of fatherhood, place his arm around his wife, find the monster of the deep, re-establish box office hegemony, and discover a reason to smile? Written by

While making a documentary, the famous oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) loses his dear friend, eaten by a jaguar shark. He raises funds for an expedition in his ship Belafonte to hunt the shark and make a new film. The journalist Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett) and a pilot that claims to be his unknown son, Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), join his crew in their journey, planned by his wife Eleanor Zissou (Anjelica Huston). While making the movie, they are attacked by pirates and left without any money to finish their work. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil