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Aardman 'Toons Up with Sony
It's a grand day out for Aardman Animations.
The British 'toonmaker behind such claymation classics as Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run has signed a three-year pact with Sony Pictures just two months after severing business ties with DreamWorks following the mediocre box office of Aardman's first computer-animated feature, Flushed Away.
The partnership, announced Tuesday by Sony's chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and cochair Amy Pascal, gives Aardman extraordinary freedom in creating future stop-motion and CG projects.
Terms of the deal call for more flexible release dates; a ramped-up production schedule that will see the Bristol-based firm expand its operations and hire more animators and increase its output from one flick every three and a half years to one every 18 months; and have more latitude creatively.
"We have been huge fans of Aardman films for a long time and this deal expands Sony's commitment to animation in the worldwide marketplace," Pascal said in a statement. "Aardman makes movies with lively humor, great stories and fun distinctive visuals. They have boundless creative energy and a passion for animation that is hard to resist. We couldn't be more excited about working with the entire Aardman team."
The Aardman deal will supplement Sony's upstart animation slate, which kicked off with last year's hit Open Season and continues with the CG penguin romp Surf's Up, due out this summer.
"This is a tremendous coup for Sony Pictures Entertainment as we continue to expand into animation," said Lynton.
For their part, Aardman principals Nick Park, Peter Lord and David Sproxton are happy Sony's aboard, especially after DreamWorks pulled the plug on its distribution deal only three films into a five-picture pact. After two outright hits, 2000's Chicken Run, which grossed $225 million globally, and 2005's Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which earned $192 million and won a Best Animated Feature Oscar, DreamWorks dumped Aardman following the critical and commercial disappointment of Flushed Away, which cost $143 million and earned a tepid $176 million in worldwide ticket sales last year.
But Park & Co. are confident the Sony partnership will prove more fruitful (or, in Wallace and Gromit's case, cheeseful).
"Pete, Nick and I are delighted to find a partner in Sony that shares our vision and believes in our core values, who will support and encourage us to produce our finest work," said Sproxton, Aardman's cofounder. "We are all very excited by the potential and have a number of projects we are keen to bring to fruition with this new relationship."
While Aardman has yet to announce its upcoming slate, the deal could herald the resurrection of the studio's shelved project The Tortoise and the Hare.
One of the films that is also reportedly on the drawing board is another feature-length Wallace & Gromit installment. Per London's Sun newspaper, Park has spent the last four months writing a script that's nearly good to go.
Aside from Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the zany plasticine pair has starred in three acclaimed half-hour claymation shorts, 1989's A Grand Day Out, 1993's The Wrong Trousers and 1995's A Close Shave, the latter two both winning Academy Awards.
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