I always breathe a sigh of relief after the announcement of a new Aardman Animation project. The studio behind some of the most imaginative stop-motion projects of the last 50 years has never been a household name or box-office titan like Walt Disney Animation, but founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton’s quirky claymation company remains just as vital to the art. So you can imagine how loudly I yelled “cheeeeeeese!” when Netflix announced a new outing for Aardman’s unofficial mascots, Wallace and Gromit.
Due out “this winter” (but positioned as a 2025 release in Netflix’s news release), Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl picks back up the well-mannered bumbling inventor Wallace and his vigilant dog Gromit standing on the edge of our current techpocalypse. Wallace, it seems, is fully Silicon Valley-pilled, and “Gromit’s concern that Wallace is becoming too dependent on his inventions proves justified,” per a synopsis. The tipping point: Wallace’s invention of an AI “smart” gnome that goes rogue. But there’s another familiar face pulling the strings: Feathers McGraw.
Introduced in the 1993 Oscar-winning short The Wrong Trousers — one of the all-time great chase movies? — Feathers is a silent criminal mastermind known to masquerade as a chicken using a red rubber glove worn as a hat. He has appeared in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos in other Wallace and Gromit shorts, the pair’s lone feature film, The Curse of the Wererabbit, and even the woefully under-discussed 2003 video game Wallace & Gromit in Project Zoo, but Vengeance Most Fowl is expected to give the penguin his true sequel moment, as seen in a brief teaser for the film.
While the distinctly British output from Aardman has struggled to connect with American audiences — films like The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man were hits around the world and blips in the States — the streaming era has been kind to the studio. Along with producing last year’s sequel to Chicken Run for Netflix, the studio also collaborated with Disney for the first time in 2023, producing a segment for the Star Wars: Visions anthology series. And last December, Aardman even produced a Wallace and Gromit VR game for Meta Quest, reminding us there is no place these two can’t go.
A new Wallace and Gromit short on Netflix is a no-brainer, and a sign of respect: if Wes Anderson could do it, obviously so can Aardman.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is once again directed by longtime Aardman creative Nick Park. Actor Ben Whitehead returns as the voice of Wallace, after taking over Peter Sallis starting with The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The short is set for this winter, teeing it up right up for Oscar season.
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