aardman animation Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The story of Noah and the flood will be told a million more times in some medium or other. But following the disappointment of Evan Almighty, it seems a little soon for a new movie version. Sure, Evan wasn't exactly a strict adaptation of the Bible tale, but it was based enough on it to make audiences not so hungry for another Ark adventure. Yet, according to Variety, Unified Pictures (Don't Move) has announced plans to do a computer-animated Noah's Ark, which will be scripted by Philip LaZebnik, who has worked on Dreamworks' Biblical kids film The Prince of Egypt and Disney's Pocahontas and Mulan. Religious films, whether live-action or animated, can be hit or miss, but like Evan Almighty, this new project is not a straightforward telling of Noah and the flood; instead it will focus on the story from the point of view of the animals.

Personally, I love the idea. But I'd love it much better if it was coming from Nick Park and Aardman Animation. It would be like Creature Comforts ... on a boat. The connection between Unified and Park exists: the indie studio has worked many times with Northern Arts Entertainment, which distributed a lot of Aardman shorts, including Park's Wallace and Gromit films. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that dream will happen. Unified seems pretty set on making a CG pic that resembles those made by the big studios. The best way of doing that, of course, is to get some familiar comedic voices involved. If this pic is more successful than Evan Almighty, perhaps we'll then get to see a greenlight on Darren Aronofsky's own Noah's Ark movie, which he's been interested in doing since he was 13.

I was so, so, so happy when Aardman Animation (Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit) got a new distribution deal with Sony two months ago. And now I'm so, so, so happy that the two studios have announced four new projects, all of which sound amazing. It isn't clear what film will arrive in theaters first, nor in what order these films will be released at all, but considering Aardman's deal with Sony is only for three years, I'm guessing at least one of these will be in theaters by the end of 2008.

• First of note is the directorial return of Aardman co-founder Peter Lord (Chicken Run), who will be make an animated feature based on Gideon Defoe's The Pirates! series of books (the first, titled The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists, features Charles Darwin as a main character). The script is being written by Lord and Defoe with British television vets Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil (they also wrote the upcoming feature Gnomeo and Juliet).
• Oscar-winner Steve Box, who co-directed Curse of the Were-Rabbit, will direct The Cat Burglars, a supposed mix of Wallace and Gromit and Ocean's Eleven that equals "family-friendly Tarantino." Writing this one, along with Box, are partners Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharaoh (British TV's Life on Mars).
  
• Four-time Oscar-winner Nick Park, who created the Wallace and Gromit characters, is working on a new feature, but the studios haven't specified exactly what it is. A few months back, when Aardman was still in flux, Park was said to be working on a new W&G project, but it probably wasn't a feature film. However, now that Sony has made feature films more possible for the animation studio, we can be hopeful that another full-length outing from our favorite cheese-lovers is in the works.
• Finally Aardman has tapped a special new screenwriter to work on an animated action film for the holiday season. Peter Baynham, who was nominated (with four other guys) for an Oscar for writing Borat, is scripting Operation Rudolph, which portrays Santa and the North Pole as being like a high-tech military force (a peaceful, present-delivering force).
  

It should be a green-tie affair at the opening night gala of this year's Tribeca Film Festival. The event, happening April 25, will be hosted by Al Gore and is set to feature some entertainment that will focus on the global warming issue. This entertainment is part of a partnership with the SOS (Save Our Selves) Campaign, which raises climate crisis awareness and will include live performances from some of the artists participating in SOS' Live Earth concert series happening on July 7. The acts set for the gala weren't revealed, but some of those involved with the Live Earth shows include Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Mayer, John Legend, Black Eyed Peas, Korn and Melissa Etheridge, who recently won an Oscar for the song she wrote for the Gore-featured documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Also, the night will include the premiere of seven short films, each of which deals with the problems and the solutions of the crisis and each of which is shorter than ten minutes. The directors and titles of these shorts were not yet revealed either, because the seven showcased films have not been chosen yet. They will be selected by the festival's planners from the 60 shorts that were commissioned by SOS. Some of the filmmakers who participated include Jonathan Glazer, Kevin Macdonald, Abel Ferrara, Amy Berg, Ari Sandel, the doc duo Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady and someone from Aardman Animation (Peter Lord? Nick Park?). It isn't completely made clear, but it seems that all 60 of the commissioned films will be shown during the Live Earth event. So, if you can't make it to New York City for the world premiere of the seven shorts, you can see at least those if not all of them at one of the concerts (so far the only locations announced are Shanghai, Sydney, London and Johannesburg, while the cities in the U.S., Brazil, Japan and Antarctica are TBA). I probably won't be able to attend the gala or one of the concerts, so hopefully there will be another place for me to see the films. After all, this is the best news for shorts fans since Cannes' announced its own opening night compilation.

Because there is still good in this world, it has taken only about three months for Aardman Animation to find a new partnership in Hollywood. The animation studio, which DreamWorks mistakenly flushed away back in January, has a new deal with Sony, and it sounds like it will be a much better team-up for the Aardman gang than their last. Reportedly, Aardman will not face the same sort of assimilation it faced at DreamWorks, where its most recent picture, Flushed Away, suffered from too much Hollywoodization. Instead, it is expected to produce a new title every 18 months, each with different budgets and some being made with CGI (as opposed to the studio's signature claymation style), all with less restriction from Sony and all based out of Aardman's home base in Bristol rather than out of Hollywood. The deal is presently set at a three year agreement, but Sony seems hopeful about the partnership lasting a long time.

Sony should benefit just as much from the deal, which will increase its output of animated films. The studio recently got into the competitive animation market full force, and so far with Monster House and Open Season it has only been performing so-so (its next release is Surfs Up, coming out June 8). Aardman will be bringing familiar characters to the table, though, with confirmed new Wallace & Gromit features. The Aardman name is also a fairly known brand around the world, which should prove profitable for overseas distribution (which Sony seems to appreciate even more than others). The partnership already has four projects in the works -- they obvioulsy aren't wasting any time -- but we are still probably a few years away from seeing the first collaboration (I'm hoping one is the animated mockumentary Tortoise vs. Hare). Although I wish Sony could now grab Crood Awakening, which had originated as an Aardman project, away from DreamWorks, I am otherwise really happy about this partnership. I may even be happier than Wallace at a cheese buffet.

If there's any Wallace & Gromit fans out there saddened by the breakup of Dreamworks and Aardman, cheer up. I told you there was plenty more in store for the animation studio's most popular characters, and I wasn't just being hopeful. According to a spokesman from Aardman, Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park is working on a new project for the claymation duo. It isn't certain, though, whether the project will be for the big screen or for television. But whatever the medium, it is scheduled to begin shooting as soon as Park is finished writing the script.

Considering the fact that Aardman is without a major film distributor for the time being, it might make sense that the new Wallace & Gromit is made for TV. Aardman already has one series (Creature Comforts) put out to CBS and if it goes well (air it already!), there could potentially be interest in more from the animation studio. Most of us W&G fans would definitely love to see another feature, like Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but we can't be choosy when it comes to these guys. We waited years between half-hour shorts, and we will take anything we're given -- except for a CGI or live-action version, of course.

Everyone knew it was coming. Following the disappointing box office of Flushed Away, there was speculation that it would happen. And now it is certain: Dreamworks has cut Aardman Animation loose. Sadly, the studio is now also citing the weak performance of the Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit as an added reason for the end of the partnership. Aside from winning prestigious awards, that film made more than $192 million worldwide (actually, only $20 million more than Flushed Away). I guess when you're used to Shrek 2-size figures ($920 million), though, a lot of numbers look small.

I'm not too worried about Aardman. They were doing amazing work before the Dreamworks deal, and they'll do amazing work after. The animation studio still has a thing going with CBS, which is sitting on seven episodes of a Creature Comforts series, which I think is based on Nick Park's Oscar-winning short. However, there may not be any features from Aardman for awhile. I was very upset to learn that Crood Awakening, which was co-written by John Cleese and was to be the next Aardman feature, is being left behind at Dreamworks, where it will presumably be shelved for good. I'm sure that Dreamworks is hoping the Shrek movies will never lose their steam, but I just can't believe that there's much more to do with those characters.

It was a good year for much of Hollywood, but a bad year for A Good Year. The Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe team-up only grossed $7 million domestically, and has been labeled a flop. Variety has listed the major box office disappointments for 2006, and interestingly enough, a few of them have to do with water. The appropriately bad way to describe their fate, then, is to say that they drowned. Flushed Away, The Lady in the Water, Poseidon and The Fountain (okay, I didn't see it, but I don't think there's an actual water-type fountain), just couldn't swim. Here's some more bad puns: Sharon Stone didn't have the Basic Instict 2 stay away from a dumb sequel; Producer Dean Devin said, "Flyboys," to his new movie but it crashed and burned; All the King's Men stayed away from this remake, and so did everyone else; Audiences let their Freedomland in other activities besides seeing a movie starring Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson. There's no pun needed for The Wicker Man; it just sucked.

Unlike the biggest flops of all time, none of these movies from 2006 broke a studio or likely ended a career. Ridley Scott and Wolfgang Petersen (director of Poseidon) have had flops before, but they can be forgiven for "flukes" every once in awhile since they usually turn out successful work. Plus, their films did okay business overseas. International box office saves more flops these days than back in the times of the really big bombs. Most of the other filmmakers represented are also probable to bounce back, or at least fall back on their other talents. Joe Roth (Freedomland) has already returned to producing. Steve Zaillian (All the King's Men) is back to writing. Tony Bill (Flyboys) may continue acting. Michael Caton-Jones (Basic Instinct 2) will eventually make another crappy film. M. Night Shyamalan (Lady in the Water) might need to be forced to work on somebody else's script for once, but he isn't going to disappear anytime soon, unfortunately.

Dreamworks isn't too happy with the box office performance of Flushed Away, the new computer-animated film released by the studio as part of its deal with Aardman Animation. The picture has only made about $41 million in the U.S. since it opened two weeks ago, and it isn't likely to come anywhere close to recouping its cost of $149 million. Variety is reporting that the studio will take a "an unspecified write-down" on the film. I'm not good with financial jargon, and I don't understand what this exactly means, but it is something kind of like a tax write-off, only partial. If anyone can explain it better in layman's terms, by all means, leave me a comment.

The part of this news that is easier to comprehend, and a little more unfortunate, is the possibility that Dreamworks will now drop its deal with Aardman. Flushed Away is the third Aardman picture co-produced by Dreamworks. The first two were Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, both of which performed much better. The next Aardman feature, Crood Awakening, which is being co-written by John Cleese, will likely have to be distributed by someone else. This is a shame, because although I haven't yet seen Flushed Away, I imagine it is better than Shrek the Third, which will make Dreamworks a whole ton of money when it's released next Spring.

What is it about kid's films? Or, rather, what is it about kid's films recently? Computer animation has made making kid's film's easier, it seems, based on the flurry of dreck like Chicken Little and The Barnyard; the better question is if computer animation has made releasing them too easy. The case in point this week is Flushed Away, the latest collaboration between Aardman Animation (Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run) and Dreamworks Animation (Shrek, Madagascar). Flushed Away combines two worlds - the design and aesthetic of Aardman's gentle, claymation stories with the computer-generated spectacle of Dreamworks' industrial approach to animation. The result is a curious, unfixed mix of the good, the bad and the ugly -- while Flushed Away has a certain English whimsy to it, it also has the overstuffed, joke-a-millisecond kind of excess that executives think render animated films breezy trifles, but actually turns them into leaden chores. Or, put another way: In Flushed Away, a group of minion frogs in the service of a mercenary bad guy known as Le Frog (and voiced by Jean Reno) are given the order to action; they immediately hurl up their hands and cry "We surrender!" Is this funny, to a kid? Is it funny to any grown-up whose I.Q. is higher than their belt size?

Before Le Frog enters the arena, though, Flushed Away begins as pampered house pet rat Roddy (voiced by Hugh Jackman) is left alone as his owner leaves the house for a holiday. Roddy promptly goes on a high-spirited spree, playing with all the toys and dolls and neat geegaws, but we also notice he's a bit lonely. A plumbing mishap leads loud, boisterous rat Sid (Shane Richie) to Roddy's home, and soon Roddy is plunged into the toilet and out of his paradise. In the sewers, Roddy finds a small London, underground -- a teeming Rodent-opolis of families, commerce and bustling activity. Roddy's quest to get back home brings him to the dock of ship's pilot Rita (voiced by Kate Winslet), who may be able to get him to the surface -- but that's waylaid by the manipulations of the silken-voiced mastermind known as The Toad (Ian McKellen), who's plotting to wipe the sewer rodent-opolis away. ...

Everyone's been analyzing various film awards to predict which movie will win the Best Picture Oscar. Should we use the Annie Awards, announced Saturday, to predict the Best Animated Feature Oscar? The International Animated Film Society feature film winner is considered a good Oscar predictor.

Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit won not only the big Annie for best animated feature (beating Chicken Little, Madagascar, and Corpse Bride), but also Annies for best director, best music, and best writing. If the Aardman Animation-produced film were up for Best Picture Oscar, Ang Lee might be sweating right now.

Wallace & Gromit faces Corpse Bride and Howl's Moving Castle for the animated feature Oscar this year. Many people have noticed that none of the animated Oscar nominee films are computer animated; they're hand-drawn or, in the case of the cheese-loving British inventors, stop-motion animated. Is this simply a fluke, or is it a backlash against the computer animation trend?