In an announcement about Aardman Animations moving to shoot its next stop-motion animated feature on a digital format for the first time, it was slipped that that film was due in 2012. The film, Pirates!, is based on The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists, a novel by Gideon Defoe. Defoe is writing the screenplay while Aardman co-founder Peter Lord will co-direct alongside Jeff Newitt. Lord previously co-directed Chicken Run. The story involves pirates meeting Charles Darwin and his sidekick monkey Mister Bobo in London while fending off an arch enemy. From what I can tell the novel and its sequels are wild and silly adventures written for adults with playful use of irony and cliche. Sounds a lot like the other great Aardman productions where people of all ages can get something out of it. Pirates! will be crafted in Aardman’s traditional claymation format.
Aardman is also working on a CGI feature with Sony ImageWorks called Arthur Christmas, about the heavily trained and militarized elves Santa employs to successfully pull off his operations. It hasn’t been made clear when that one is expected to be ready for theaters. Both of these films mark the fruits of Aardman’s deal with Sony after they ended their distribution agreement with DreamWorks Animation.
