Aardman, the legendary claymation film studio who brought us the likes of Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run they also brought us (unfortunately) the 3D movie Flushed Away, are at it again as they release the films they are preparing to release out into the wild in the coming years.
The first film is called The Cat Burglars and is a story about a group of stay cats who steal milk. Sounds original and hopefully it will be in claymation. They have signed up Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah to work with the direction Steve Box on this one. Aardman says it will include the cool styling of Ocean’s Eleven and the the comedy action of Wallace and Gromit, sounds like a keeper
The next movie is based around the Pirates books (written by Gideon Defoe) which includes 3 books and one to be released 2008. I think it is gonna be hard to pull this one off as water with clay just hasn’t proven itself worthy and real water would screw with the clay. For this movie they have the minds of Peter Lord (co-founder of Aardman and director of Chicken Run), Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil who worked on Slacker Cats and Hyperdrive.
The final film is called Operation Rudolph, which sounds a little bit corny, and is an action film set on Christmas night. The film will portray the happenings of the production of toys and stuff at the North Pole. The twist is it is a high tech military procedure on a massive scaled. It shows how Santa and his army of combat elves get around the whole world in one night. The only person, who they have released, working on this film is one of the Borat writers Peter Baynham.
I am going to go the Pirate based movie (if they can pull the water off) then the Cat Burglars and then Operation Rudolph as I think the Christmas movies are way overdue although Aardman have a canny knack at pulling it off at the right times.