Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts fueling awards season’s most talked-about movies continues with Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Netflix‘s stop-motion animated feature that returns Aardman Animations‘ iconic duo to the big screen after a 20-year hiatus.
The latest screenplay was written by Nick Park and Mark Burton, based on a story by and directed by Park and Merlin Crossingham. The film world premiered in the fall at AFI Fest, aired on the BBC on Christmas Day and debuted on Netflix on January 3.
It followed the 2005 success of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which grossed $192 million at the global box office.
In Vengeance Most Fowl, Wallace creates a new “smart” gnome, named Norbit, which becomes a local sensation. News reports of this innovation draw the attention of the previously imprisoned foe Feathers McGraw. The cunning Feathers hacks Wallace’s files and reprograms the gnome from prison, switching its personality to “evil mode.” This leads to chaos as the town accuses Wallace of being responsible for the disappearance of his customers’ possessions, making him the prime suspect. It once again forces Gromit to set aside his knitting needles and spring into action to save his master.
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Park explains that the initial concept of the film had been brewing since 2005. “You often find when you make one film, it spawns the idea for another, and this happened on Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” he said. “Gnomes have always been a big part of Wallace and Gromit’s world, so we had the idea ‘What if Wallace invented a smart gnome to help Gromit?’ We’re very much led by the idea, and when the time seems right is when you’ve got a good idea that seems to have legs. This idea had been knocking around for a while, and it offered a lot of potential for story and gags and drama — all the elements we’re always after.”
The film was originally conceived as another half-hour special, but as the project developed it became clear it needed a broader canvas, especially when it was decided to reintroduce one of the most popular characters from Wallace and Gromit’s past. “We were inspired to bring back Feathers McGraw to solve a story problem really,” explains Park. “The original idea was just about Wallace inventing these mechanical smart gnomes, and how they go wrong and cause trouble, but there was always a problem with what’s motivating them. So it was like a lightning strike really — people have been asking for a long time when were we going to bring back Feathers, but we had never really found the right place for it. And this seemed like the perfect opportunity to put him in a story.”
Click below to read the script.
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