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Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

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3 articles from 2007

19 June 2007 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Numerous movies about cat burglars have been produced in the past -- for example, the classic To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant in 1955 and the forgettable Burglar with Whoopi Goldberg in 1987 -- but Britain's Aardman Features announced Monday that it is planning a heist movie in which the burglars are actually cats. The claymation film from Wallace & Gromit director Steve Box is said to be a kind of take-off of Ocean's Eleven. Another feature, based on two books from Gideon Defoe's Pirates! series, will reportedly be directed by Aardman cofounder Peter Lord. Aardman recently signed a new deal with Sony Pictures after being dumped by DreamWorks Animation last year. In a statement, Sarah Smith, the newly appointed creative director of Aardman, said, "I think there's a great opportunity to excite audiences by raising the stakes in terms of the quality, intelligence and variety of stories our animated films tell and the genres they inhabit."

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1 February 2007 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

A day after DreamWorks Animation severed its relationship with Aardman Animation, citing its unprofitable releases of Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit in 2005 and Flushed Away in 2006, Aardman said it is developing a new Wallace and Gromit movie. An Aardman spokesman told Reuters that Nick Park, who created the characters, is working on a script for a new feature. "What we have achieved [as a result of the split with DreamWorks Animation] is our freedom to make the film we want to make," spokesman Arthur Sheriff said Wednesday. Unlike Flushed Away, which was produced using computer animation, the new film will be produced using Aardman's signature Claymation technique. "Nick loves creating stories for Wallace and Gromit and he feels they only really work in plasticine," Sheriff said.

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31 January 2007 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

DreamWorks Animation has ended its partnership with Britain's Aardman Animation after taking enormous losses on Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which won the Oscar for best animated film of 2005, and last year's Flushed Away. The latter film reportedly cost DreamWorks $142.9 million but took in only about $50 million at the box office. In a statement DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said, "While I will always be a fan and an admirer of Aardman's work, our different business goals no longer support each other." Aardman spokesman Arthur Sheriff told the London Times that the company wanted to return to making "claymation" films. (It used computer animation for Flushed Away.) He added: "We always knew that America would be a hard task for us -- we're a very English company. ... We think part of our strength is our English sense of humor and we want to continue with that."

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3 articles from 2007