Dreamworks vs Aardman: The Troubled Partnership

Aardman is honestly one of my top 10 animation studios! It's a shame that people don't pay much attention to them anymore. Also for those who are wondering, Flushed Away was done in CG due to the studio catching on fire.

7:53 “Just because a film is not a colossal blockbuster doesn’t mean it’s a failure.” THANK YOU! I always thought this too, and I wish someone would tell this to other movie studios.

0:38 I’d argue that the finger prints add to the charm.

DreamWorks: Wallace is supposed to be American and we're going to be replacing Peter Sallis Aardman: no way Peter Sallis is the voice of Wallace we're going to be keeping him

I feel like The Pirates is one of the most underrated films ever. For a kids movie it is still enjoyable to watch. Sadly I don’t hear a lot of people talking about it. It could be that I’m from the U.S. and Aardman is U.K. based, but I feel like it should get more attention.

Their movies are so good, it’s a shame they aren’t as successful now just because they ended their partnership with dreamworks

As a kid I didn't want to watch Flushed Away because I assumed it was just going to be potty humor. Bought the DVD for five bucks a few years ago and was thoroughly entertained, glad I gave it a shot (Over the Hedge too, which I bought around the same time and likewise overlooked as a kid because of the commercials).

I've read Aardman's book "an Epic Journey, One Frame at a Time" and you're absolutely right with Flushed Away having Dreamworks meddling - to an extent that dwarfs Wallace and Gromit Curse of the Ware Rabbit. According to the book, Dreamworks insisted that the film had to be made in CGI to compete with Pixar's Ratatouille which was in development at the same time. Due to this, Aardman, an animation company, had to give the film to be animated in California by Dreamworks since Aardman didn't have any CGI animators. The main character Roddy also had these two butler characters in the trailers, which Dreamworks insisted to be scrapped too. (I'm actually a little in favour of this, because having butlers would likely undermine the theme of Roddy's loneliness without friends, but I would have preferred it to be Aardman's call to make) I will be the first to admit that Aardman's films haven't seen the sales that they deserve since they've broken up with Dreamworks, but I wouldn't necessarily call them failures. Mostly because, in terms of quality, these films are some of the best animated films to come out in their respective years! Arthur Christmas, the Shaun the Sheep Movie, Early Man, and Pirates on an Adventure with Scientists are infinitely rewatchable and only seem to get better every time! A lot of these films often make up their losses by putting the characters in adverts in the UK, too. That being said, I would be lying if I said I didn't have some concern with Aardman in its current state. Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon was the first Aardman film that I felt was exclusively a kid's film with no adult appeal at all, and it was even more of a box office loss than Early Man. The Chicken Run sequel had been delayed for several years, and is starting to look like Half Life 3 to me. Sure, you can blame the COVID pandemic, but the idea of such a good self-contained story as Chicken Run having a sequel doesn't seem to have anyone excited anyway. The fact that it's coming out excusive to Netflix - especially with Netflix's reputation for treatment of animation - doesn't seem like they have that much faith in the film performing well. Whatever happens, I wish Aardman the best of luck and will probably keep watching whatever they put out!

Aardman never fails to amuse me, whether their films are short or feature length.

Don’t forget Sony pictures animation partnered with Aardman for 2 movies, the aforementioned pirates band of misfits and Arthur Christmas. Seriously the latter took forever to come out on dvd over here. Like 12 months after release at least!

Curse of the Were Rabbit isn’t the first UK film to struggle through executive meddling. Thomas and the Magic Railroad was screwed because of test audiences and important scenes got cut out, causing the story to fall flat.

Let’s say Dreamworks became nightmare works when they dared to make Wallace and gromit more American

I feel bad for aardman that they had to deal with dreamworld meddling and demands, though I’m not surprised that dreamworks did that, considering one of the Founders is the same idiots that demanded to Pixar that they make toy story more edgy, resulting in the disastrous Black Friday reel that not only almost got toy story canceled but maybe Pixar in general would’ve been canned too. I love the films that dreamworks did with aardman, (even flushed away, which does have its share of those typical dreamworks twitches like some pop culture jokes, a bit of low brow humour and pop music, but the way I see it, those elements don’t go overboard unlike a few other dreamworks films like shark tale and home and i think aardman’s charm made the typical dreamworks jokes work really well, plus it was my favourite aardman film until I saw Arthur Christmas) but it probably was for the best that they split.

"Chicken Run" is one of my favorite childhood movies. It blew my mind when I learned that it was basically a kid version of "The Great Escape". Would "Chicken Run 2" be a kid version of "Inglorious Basterds"?

Sean the Sheep is probably the peak of Aardman's feature-length movies so far. It's just so... simple. And that's what makes it so appealing. Also, Arthur Christmas is brilliantly conceived and executed - a real Christmas classic. Were-Rabbit has some great moments but ultimately feels a little stretched compared to to tight, punchy and inventive W&G shorts. Also, I believe Nick Park said working with Dreamworks actually made them better storytellers, which I can believe - so not all bad.

i wasn't born when any of these films came out, but i did watch Wallace and Gromit the curse of the were rabbit in 3rd grade, and that's when i started to watch more of it and getting closer to the aardman films.

I actually want them to reunite someday! DreamWorks and Aardman could be the biggest rivals to Disney and Pixar!

The moment you said "4Kids Entertainment", I immediately thought "... Oh, no."

The slugs were okay in my opinion.

Aardman have something many companies don't have anymore. Love and soul. Every fingerprint you see is the fingerprint of someone who stood there for hours to make that 1 little scene