I all the time breathe a sigh of reduction after the announcement of a brand new Aardman Animation undertaking. The studio behind a few of the most imaginative stop-motion tasks of the final 50 years has by no means been a family title or box-office titan like Walt Disney Animation, however founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton’s quirky claymation firm stays simply as important to the artwork. So you possibly can think about how loudly I yelled “cheeeeeeese!” when Netflix introduced a brand new outing for Aardman’s unofficial mascots, Wallace and Gromit.
Due out on the high of 2025, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl picks again up the well-mannered bumbling inventor Wallace and his vigilant canine Gromit standing on the sting of our present techpocalypse. Wallace, it appears, is absolutely Silicon Valley-pilled, and “Gromit’s concern that Wallace is changing into too depending on his innovations proves justified,” per a synopsis. The tipping level: Wallace’s invention of an AI “good” gnome that goes rogue. However there’s one other acquainted face pulling the strings: Feathers McGraw.
Launched within the 1993 Oscar-winning quick The Mistaken Trousers — one of many all-time nice chase motion pictures? — Feathers is a silent legal mastermind identified to masquerade as a rooster utilizing a crimson rubber glove worn as a hat. He has appeared in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos in different Wallace and Gromit shorts, the pair’s lone function movie, The Curse of the Wererabbit, and even the woefully under-discussed 2003 online game Wallace & Gromit in Mission Zoo, however Vengeance Most Fowl is predicted to present the penguin his true sequel second, as seen in a quick teaser for the movie.
Whereas the distinctly British output from Aardman has struggled to attach with American audiences — movies like The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man had been hits around the globe and blips within the States — the streaming period has been form to the studio. Together with producing final 12 months’s sequel to Hen Run for Netflix, the studio additionally collaborated with Disney for the primary time in 2023, producing a phase for the Star Wars: Visions anthology collection. And final December, Aardman even produced a Wallace and Gromit VR recreation for Meta Quest, reminding us there isn’t a place these two can’t go.
A brand new Wallace and Gromit quick on Netflix is a no brainer, and an indication of respect: if Wes Anderson may do it, clearly so can Aardman.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is as soon as once more directed by longtime Aardman artistic Nick Park. Actor Ben Whitehead returns because the voice of Wallace, after taking up Peter Sallis beginning with The Curse of the Have been-Rabbit. The film is out on Netflix on Jan. 3, 2025.
