Back in 2005, Nick Park and the folks at Aardman Animations won an Oscar for their work on Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. A year later, their follow-up film Flushed Away disappointed at the box office and prompted Dreamworks to sever their partnership. Since then we haven’t heard much from the British studio, save for one new made-for-TV Wallace & Gromit adventure, but they did land a deal with Sony Pictures and now they’re finally ready to tell us about some of projects they’ve got cooking.

One of the films is a holiday-themed feature called Arthur Christmas, which “tackles the question of how Santa delivers all his presents in one night”. Sarah Smith and Barry Cook (Mulan) will direct the movie, which will be computer animated, based on a script by Peter Baynham (Borat, Bruno). The other project, which I’m a bit more interested in, is a stop motion animated project called Pirates!, based on the best-selling book series by Gideon Defoe. Peter Lord (Chicken Run) and Jeff Newitt will be helming this one.

There is one other Aardman project listed on IMDb currently. Tortoise vs. Hare is described as a mockumentary about “Aesop’s fable of the race between the slow, steady tortoise and the quick but overconfident hare”. Based on their underrated Creature Comforts series, I think this could be pretty cool, but it’s currently only listed as “in development”. Perhaps it has been shelved for the time being. Are you a fan of Aardman Animations? Do any of these projects sound appealing to you?