Aardman Animations has released the first significant information about its next claymation feature film, now titled The Pirates! Band of Misfits. The movie is based on The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists, the novel by Gideon Defoe. Aardman co-founder Peter Lord (Chicken Run) serves as the director while Jeff Newitt is the co-director. Defoe adapted his own work for the screenplay. The voice cast includes: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, Ashley Jensen, Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant and Brian Blessed.
Hugh Grant, starring in his first animated role, is the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas. With a rag-tag crew at his side (Freeman, Gleeson, Tovey, and Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award. It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London. Along the way they battle a diabolical queen (Staunton) and team up with a haplessly smitten young scientist (Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!
Based on what I’ve read about the novel, I think this is right up Aardman’s alley. The material seems silly and funny, but also depends strongly on playing with irony and genre conventions. Effectively, kids can enjoy the content on one level while adults can enjoy that and a higher level, much like most of Aardman’s productions, like all the Wallace and Gromit films.
The Pirates! Band of Misfits will arrive in theaters courtesy of Sony on March 20th, 2012. Aardman also has its second CGI film Arthur Christmas, which is being produced with Sony Pictures Imageworks for a release date of November 23rd, 2011. You can read more about that one over here. That’ll be a nice couple months for animation fans.
