wallace and gromit Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In today's technology-obsessed entertainment world, most of the animated fare is done with computers. That's not to say it's any less legit than hand-drawn animation -- because if you're working on a CG feature, you BETTER know how to animate in "traditional" fashion -- but I'm just explaining why the sweat behind the Wallace & Gromit films is just a little extra-special. Plus, with three award-winning shorts and a fantastic feature behind them, W & G have more than proven their worth by now.

So YAY! Aardman Animation has a new one to show us! A Matter of Loaf and Death will premiere on BBC1 come Christmas Day, so I might have to wait a few extra weeks, but boy am I psyched to see it. (I've watched The Wrong Trousers, A Grand Day Out, and A Close Shave more times than I care to mention -- and I say The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is just awesome.) According to the official site, the 30-minute Loaf and Death is a mystery about missing bakers -- but you can (can't) check out the trailer right here!

I always kind of thought that Tim Meadows deserved to be way more famous than he is; but, I guess his brand of humor just never really caught on. Instead, Meadows just keeps steadily working on projects that, for the most part, seem kind of beneath him. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Meadows is set to star in They Came from Upstairs with High School Musical star Ashley Tisdale.

The family-friendly film centers on a group of teens who fend off an alien invasion that seems to be originating from the second floor of their vacation home -- sure it sounds silly, but then again, it is a kid's movie. Meadows has slummed it before in plenty of family-friendly flicks, so it's not a big surprise to see his name in the credits of another kiddie movie. At least with some of his work in teen comedies, he has the chance to be a little more 'risqué'.

The original spec script for Upstairs was written by Mark Burton (Madagascar and Wallace and Gromit) and was purchased back in 2006 by 20th Century Fox for $1.75 million. So, I guess they are banking on the film to pull in a tidy profit at the box-office. Luckily for them, securing Tisdale in the lead guarantees legions of tweens on opening day, so I think that their investment is going to pay off. Meadows will play Sheriff Doug Armstrong, but I doubt most of the audience for this movie will get to truly appreciate the comic mind that created Leon Phelps. They Came from Upstairs is set for release on January 16th, 2009.

If you aren't familiar with the characters Wallace and Gromit, this is the perfect month to get acquainted. The claymation duo's Oscar-winning feature debut, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, is one of the best Halloween-time movies for the whole family. After watching that -- and laughing your tail off -- you need to check out animator Nick Park's other W&G films. There's three shorts, titled A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, all of which were nominated for the Academy Award (the latter two won -- the first actually only lost out to another brilliant short by Park, Creature Comforts). Then, you'll be all caught up and all set to wait until the next loony adventure, which has just been announced to be coming in Christmas 2008. According to BBC News, the new film will be another short, will be co-written by Bob Baker and will be titled Trouble At' Mill.

In Trouble, Wallace and his faithful, silent sidekick (pet isn't quite right for Gromit) have yet another inventive business. This time, it's a bakery, fully equipped with mechanical arms that knead the dough. And like in past films, there's a mystery to be solved, this one involving twelve bakers who have disappeared (will Wallace end up completing the baker's dozen?). Also, Wallace has another new love interest, who can be seen in sketches and a model care of the BBC here. Back in February, when we heard about another W&G project in the works, I had hoped it would be another feature. Then, two months later, when Aardman Animation struck a new distribution deal with Sony, I kept on hoping. Finally, in June, Aardman/Sony announced four new projects, one of which was said to be from Park!

But with this new announcement Park told the BBC that while he'd like to make another feature-length film, they take so long and Hollywood involves so much pressure. He also said that he's doing this one strictly for himself and the fans. Hey, I'm glad to have anything featuring the pair, just as long as I do get to see it. Trouble At' Mill, which begins filming in January, is set to premiere exclusively on BBC One next Christmas, but hopefully it will get a quick television or DVD release in the States soon after.

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).
  

Mark Burton has been hired by Warner Bros. to write the feature film adaptation of James Turner's comic book Rex Libris. The comic is about "an everyday guy who becomes part of a secret sect of librarians who battle forces of darkness in chasing down overdue or stolen books." Seriously! The "comedic action-adventure" will focus on head librarian Rex Libris, a man "who must protect the world's knowledge and most dangerous secrets from falling into the wrong hands." When a squad of punks storm the library and remove a certain card from the catalog, the library's walls collapse and a secret stack of books is revealed, which apparently leads the crew on a string of global and intergalactic adventures. I've said it before and I'll say it again: You don't mess with the Dewey Decimal System.

Rex and the other librarians have a huge array of high-tech weapons, but they are also helped by an ancient god who lives underneath the library. Geez, haven't we seen this story enough? Variety doesn't mention whether the film will be animated or live action, but Burton wrote Madagascar and worked on Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, so using context clues I'm assuming it'll be a cartoon. Hopefully they don't try to sneak in some message about how kids should read and use their imaginations and crap like that. I've got to tell you, reading the synopsis, I thought of the perfect man to join Rex's team: Bookman, the Library Cop from Seinfeld! "I don't judge a man by the length of his hair or the kind of music he listens to. Rock was never my bag. But you put on a pair of shoes when you walk into the New York Public Library, fella!"

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.

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.

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.

AMC Theatres is continuing its lead in exhibitor promotions by giving out more free movies this summer. Perhaps you remember last summer when the cinema chain offered a money-back guarantee for Cinderella Man. Then last month it gave out free Akeelah and the Bee tickets to teachers. This time, the deal includes 12 different movies, is open to anyone and goes through the season.

In select cities (listed after the jump), G- and PG-rated films will be shown for free on Wednesday mornings. The films are not new, of course, but they are all popular family fare that are undeniably good deals. They include Shark Tale, Shrek, Shrek 2, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Racing Stripes, Because of Winn-Dixie, Ice Age, Dreamer, Madagascar, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, March of the Penguins, and, the movie I will go see free any time, Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. In addition, The Cartoon Network is producing the pre-show entertainment, which will include bonus cartoon shorts.

It doesn't get any better than free movies, and the only catch is that the program's sponsors will likely be showing commercials during the pre-show. Like that is any different than when we pay, right? AMC's plan is brilliant, especially if they have their concession stands open at 9am. Since the movies aren't first-run, the theatres don't have to pay a lot to the studios to show them. In fact, the program's sponsors might be paying for the titles by themselves. And as packed as any of these shows is likely to be, seeing as they're free, they should be guaranteed to sell out on any rainy wednesday morning. If they sell popcorn to a good percentage of the audience, AMC will be making a ton of money (If they would sell better popcorn, they'd get some of the money from me, as well).