Aardman Animations has recently announced that they are working on a full cinematic release for a Shaun The Sheep Movie with Studio Canal producing and distributing the film. However, the down side is that there’s a very long wait for the finished result, which will be released in the distant future of 2015, by which time we’ll all be driving flying cars, have trainers that tie themselves and take to the streets with the holy grail that will be hover boards. Sadly with just a year to go, some that will probably not come to pass, but at least we’ll have a new stop-motion movie to look forward to.
Back To The Future references aside, it takes a long time to put together the painstaking animation at the heart of films like Wallace An Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit or Chicken Run, so we imagine that the intervening time has been spent slightly nudging and moulding model clay sets and characters to pull the film together at Aardman Studios. Series creator, Richard Starzak, will be on board to help complete the wooly movie together with Mark Burton writing and directing.
Shaun and the rest of the characters from the series setting of Mossybottom Farm will be in on the big screen action. The story sees Farmer being forced to leave Mossybotton because of Shaun’s misadventures, forcing him to move to the city. Wracked with guilt, Shaun enlists Blitzer and the rest of the flock to go on a mission to put everything right and get the farmer back in charge of things once again.
To add to the workload of Aardman animators, it’s not just the Shaun The Sheep Movie that they’ve got to stop motion capture as a fourth TV series has also been announced. The new series of the show aired in early 2014, which is probably one of the biggest reasons we’ll have to wait until 2015 before the film is released as filming for the movie started filming at the end of January 2014. However, the first teaser trailers have now been released so you can get a glimpse of what to expect below and you’ll be able to catch the film for yourself in February 2015 when it gets its general release date in the UK and US.
Shaun The Sheep Movie poster:
Shaun first appeared in Nick Park’s Wallace And Gromit’s A Close Shave in 1995 when he helped to bring down the misguided Wendoline Ramsbottom and her nasty bruiser pooch, Preston. The baddie in the Shaun the Sheep movie will hopefully be just as menacing and funny as Wendoline and Preston were to create a big impact for the cinematic release. Alan Rickman as a deathly psychotic land owner or Michael Dorf as a molevolent tax man, for example, would be genius. Alfred Molena as Farmer’s nasty older brother would also be pretty cool, but we’ll have to wait and see how the Shaun The Sheep Movie pans out.
Shaun The Sheep Movie teaser trailer:
The film was followed up in 2019 with the sequel Farmageddon and the Shaun The Sheep Movie 2 DVD, Blu-ray and digital release follows in January 2019.
