Comic-Con 2011: The Pirates! Band Of Misfits, Arthur Christmas

The British studio Aardman Animation is best known for Wallace & Gromit, but recently signed a deal with Sony for three animated features. Hall H saw excusive footage from two of them shown for the first time.

Aardman's first film on the slate was The Pirates! Band Of Misfits. This one is done in their traditional stop-motion style, which may explain why it's so late in capitalizing on the Pirates of the Caribbean bandwagon. Cast includes Hugh Grant, Salma Hayek, Jeremy Piven and David Tennant as Charles Darwin. The technical effort that went into the production of this thing was insane, with dozens of detailed miniature sets and jointed figurines with clay faces.

The trailer was screened in 3D, which (as far as I know) makes The Pirates! Band Of Misfits the first claymation movie to be shot in the third dimension. Lots of sight gags, many of which took advantage of 3D to add a little oomph. Peter Lord of Aardman came onstage and talked a bit about the film. The plot is straight cliche, with a bumbling captain (Grant) aided by the one sane man on the ship in the form of Martin Freeman (soon to be seen in The Hobbit). In his mission to become Pirate of the Year, the captain comes up against a homicidal Queen Victoria, who bears a serious hate-on for scurvy dogs. The film appears genially wacky and should be a good family film, but we'll see how it performs.

A second clip was screened that gave a behind-the-scenes look into the process of constructing the movie. It included lots of bits that are later elided digitally, and seeing the Aardman artisans interact with their incredibly complex sets and props is pretty awesome.

The Pirates! Band Of Misfits hits theaters March 30, 2012.

Aardman Animation's forays into CGI haven't set the world on fire - Chicken Run, anybody? - but they're still making a go of it with Arthur Christmas, a tale about Santa Claus's youngest son (voiced by James McAvoy) who finds himself having to save the holiday. The cast is very British and very great - Hugh Laurie! Jim Broadbent! Bill Nighy! - but do we really need to save Christmas again? Creator Peter Bayham was involved both with Borat  and cult British show I'm Alan Partridge, so there could be something good buried in there.

The base idea, according to Bayham, comes from one simple question: "How?" How does one man visit so many houses in one night? And how has he been doing it for so long? It involves a lot of help. Whether this is enough of a hook to hang a movie on is still up in the air.


The trailer was a brief teaser, showing Arthur surreptitiously filming his father's Airborne Giftwrapping Brigade as they use their present-preparing skills on an unwilling polar bear. Bayham showed some stills from the film, spotlighting the secret technology that Claus uses to make the Christmas delivery. A sleek rocket-sled (with "50,000 bathrooms") and a high-tech Mission Control got a lot of laughs.

Arthur Christmas releases November 11, 2011.