#Aardman animations movie#

#Aardman animations movie#

In November 2011, Arthur Christmas held its own at the US box office against juggernauts like The Muppets and the final Twilight movie but didn’t have the room to stretch its legs over the festive period. At the UK box office, Aardman films enjoy something of a home advantage, but as was true of many of Sony’s bigger missteps during this period, neither film’s release was especially well handled in terms of marketing and release. The two that were produced are Aardman films through and through, but this distribution deal also came to an end after they underwhelmed at the box office. In 2007, the two studios announced a slate including Operation Rudolph (which became 2011’s Arthur Christmas) and The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists, as well as a “family-friendly Tarantino” heist caper called The Cat Burglars, and the then-untitled Early Man. Sealed just two months after breaking up with DreamWorks, Aardman’s next deal with a big Hollywood studio came through their work with the then-fledgling Sony Pictures Animation. Nick Park would eventually make his own caveman film at Aardman in the shape of 2018’s Early Man, which also seemed to scratch that earlier sports movie itch in the process. DeMicco continued to develop the film at DreamWorks with the family element of the story coming in later on. However, relationships with DreamWorks soured slightly after Katzenberg made the snap decision to produce Flushed Away, their next planned collaboration, as a CG-animated feature instead, so that it could beat Pixar’s Ratatouille into cinemas.Īs originally written by John Cleese and Kirk DeMicco, Crood Awakening would have seen two lively Stone Age characters, a caveman and an inventor, go on an adventure together. To Lord and Sproxton’s deep regret, the script wasn’t where it needed to be when they started production, forcing them to postpone the film indefinitely in 2002.ĭespite this blow, the studio bounced back in 2005 with Wallace and Gromit’s massively acclaimed first feature film, The Curse Of The Wererabbit.

Shot as a Creature Comforts-style mockumentary, the film would have featured the voice talents of Michael Caine and Paul Whitehouse in the lead roles, with Bob Hoskins and Brenda Blethyn set to take supporting roles.Īs detailed in the company’s excellent autobiography, Aardman: An Epic Journey, Taken One Frame At A Time, the production ran into story difficulties shortly after production began. Spoofing underdog sports movies, Chicken Run scribe Karey Kirkpatrick had come up with a take on Aesop’s famous fable, in which a tortoise called Morris demands a race with a hare called Harry. Instead, they embarked on what proved to be a difficult second feature, titled Tortoise Vs Hare. But having long since established its uniqueness in the animated feature market, how did Aardman get here and where might its future films come from? Slow and steadyĪlthough Chicken Run 2 is currently in development, Lord and Park didn’t yet have another story they wanted to tell when Katzenberg first suggested making a direct sequel to their hugely successful “Great Escape with chickens” debut. With Lord in place as a creative leader, their output has been resolutely British, with a sense of humour and storytelling as distinctive as the fingerprints that are sometimes visible on their characters’ faces.Īdmirably, Lord and Sproxton recently transferred majority ownership of the company to its employees, further underlining its independence in comparison with the bigger animation studios over the pond.

Still, it’s been a long and winding road for Aardman to get to this point, traversing various distribution deals and even leaving a couple of projects unrealised along the way.