Britain’s favourite cheese-loving stop-motion duo return to our screens for the big day.
Wallace & Gromit are back this Christmas on BBC One for a rematch with the villainous Feathers McGraw. The villain, who menaced our heroes in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, is out of prison and out for revenge.
Here’s the synopsis for Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
After a recent crime wave of stolen garden goods from across the region, Wallace and his pre-programmed smart gnome, Norbot, are the main suspects. While Wallace proclaims his innocence, it’s up to Gromit once again to battle sinister forces, or Wallace will never invent again!
Before the premiere, the film’s directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham have spoken about bringing the pair back to the BBC…
Nick: I think the BBC is a perfect fit because Wallace & Gromit’s home has always been the BBC. The BBC has been greatly supportive over the years and now Wallace & Gromit has become a staple thing on the BBC in the UK, especially over the holidays. I sometimes have to pinch myself to think that my student film, A Grand Day Out, is on the BBC!
Merlin: People often say that they watch Wallace & Gromit at Christmas, it is part of a tradition and we’re just so delighted that we can continue that with Vengeance Most Fowl. It feels like the best place to be.
They also talk about the film’s long journey to the screen…
Merlin: It’s a long journey!
Nick: The idea has been with us for a few years but actually when we started real work on it, from when Mark Burton came on board, it’s been about four years. Within that time and once we’re happy with the script, we start storyboarding and that becomes the story reel which plays like the film with a rough soundtrack with our scratch music and voices, so it gives us a feel of the shape of everything.
Feathers McGraw (c) Aardman/BBC/Netflix
Merlin: So, the actual time it takes for us to do the whole process is about five years. It’s around a year of writing, a year of storyboarding and into pre-production and then a couple of years of actually ramping up to film. We usually film for around 15-18 months and then go straight into post-production. Then we can share it with the world!
Nick: At the peak of it, we have around 35 animators all working every day on different sets doing between 1-5 seconds of animation a day.
Merlin: We have around 200 supporting crew in the studio too. It’s a massive team effort to make a film like this.
Nick: In a good week, we might hit a minute of film. That’s good going too!
And the impressive cast…
Nick: One of the fun parts of this process is choosing the voices for these characters and we’ve got such a brilliant cast. We’ve of course got Ben Whitehead voicing Wallace, we have Peter Kay who was originally PC MacIntosh in Curse of the Ware-Rabbit but he’s now been promoted to Chief Inspector MacIntosh. He’s training up a young police cadet called PC Mukherjee, played by Lauren Patel who is excellent.
Merlin: We’ve also got Reece Shearsmith as Norbot. The process is quite abstract because we don’t have much to show the voice actors when they start working with them, so we ask them to do some quite peculiar things and they have to take a leap of faith. It’s wonderful to hear the characters for the first time and we then use their vocals as a springboard for the physical performance that the animators bring later on in the process.
Actor Ben Whitehead also discusses taking on the role of Wallace for Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl…
After having the chance to work on the voice of Wallace for a range of projects for so long, the opportunity to work on a feature was daunting but extremely exciting. It’s a very different experience to what I’ve been used to the in the past because it’s on a much bigger scale. Consequently, a lot more work has to go into the recording of it as well, so it’s a lot harder to do.
And he recalls working with the late Peter Sallis…
I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Peter on Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which was in 2005. I worked as a read-in actor and it just so happened that I could also do the voice so it was helpful when I was reading with the other actors when they were recording their lines. Before I first met Peter, I was told that he had a dry sense of humour. He was hilarious, so kind, very honest and a brilliant guy to work with and to listen to. I’m so glad I had that chance because working on Curse of the Were-Rabbit gave the opportunity to be in the room with him on many occasions.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl airs on Christmas Day at 6.10 pm on BBC One, following Doctor Who.
For the rest of the world, it lands at Netflix on January 3rd, 2025.