Wallace and Gromit have been to the moon, caught a jewel thief in a high-speed train chase, conducted an ovine prison break, escaped a werewolf curse and stopped a cereal killer. But now, with their latest feature-length adventure, they will be taking on their most unexpected threat yet: a sequel.

Or is it? Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, as the title playfully suggests, sees the return of Feathers McGraw, the penguin criminal from The Wrong Tros who used the eponymous steam-punk pantaloons to steal a prize diamond from the local museum, caught by Gromit and put in the City Zoo. He’s back and ready to wreak havoc once more (the original title was Revengance Most Fowl, but was cut down as the original was deemed too nonsensical). Topping up the villain, there’s also a ing character from Were-Rabbit and the motorbike with side-car from A Close Shave plays a key part.

After Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget brought back Mrs Tweedy, this looks very much like Aardman is getting with the program and revisiting its greatest antagonists. But as with anything from the Bristolian titans of stop-motion animation, nothing is that simple. Per Nick Park, the story ended up at the familiar pin-eyed face in a roundabout manner:

“The basic idea was ‘what if Wallace was to invent a smartphone to help Gromit around the garden?’ I was working on it for quite a while and then realized we needed a bit more darkness in the story - it was how to achieve that with this gnome. And it was like a lightning strike: Feathers, he could be behind it.”

Or, as co-director Merlin Crossingham put it, “it was like the story demanded it. It wasn’t premeditated.”

This thinking - creative free-wheeling in an inherently time-intensive production approach - ran through ScreenRant’s visit to Aardman’s production studio back in the summer to talk to crew about the return to the world of Wallace & Gromit movies for a full-scale adventure after 16 years. Here’s what we learned...

How Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl Came To Be

An Unexpected Wallace & Gromit Movie

So, what is Vengeance Most Fowl?

The new Wallace and Gromit movie is not one of their typical adventures by any precedent. The four shorts aired on BBC in the UK and clocked in around 30 minutes each, while The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was a feature-length theatrical outing. The new movie was originally conceived as a short in-line with the others, but the scope grew massively.

It’s also part of the current deal between Aardman and Netflix which has already yielded Chicken Run 2, two Shawn the Sheep movies and delightful short Robin Robin. After the movie premieres on BBC One on Christmas Day in the UK, the movie will drop on Netflix everywhere else worldwide in early 2025. But as a concept, it came organically from Nick Park after years of percolation and rumblings around Aardman HQ.

The Return Of Feathers McGraw

So, to the movie. The primary plot focuses on Wallace as he becomes increasingly technologically dependent. This develops a robot gnome dubbed Norbot. Typically, something goes wrong, crimes are committed, incorrect accusations made and, via a series of dominoes, the evil chicken returns.

Feathers McGraw is the most iconic character from the movies outside the core duo and Shawn the Sheep, with cheeky cameos in Were-Rabbit and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, among others, and many questions were put to the directors about his possible (and, now, eventual) return.

The Feathers of Vengeance Most Fowl is one that is meticulously recognizable. The animation style was expanded while, as Park puts it, “keeping him on this very steady line of not being too expressive.” His pin-head eyes were carefully selected from hundreds of pitch black pins and each shot lit to give him what Crossingham describes as the “twinkle in his eye” that turns a simple puppet into an embodiment of malice.

Vengeance Most Fowl’s Cast. Old & New

Wallace - Ben Whitehead

Wallace, originally voiced by Peter Sallis who died in 2017, has been taken over by Ben Whitehead for Vengeance Most Fowl's cast. Whitehead, who served as Sallis’ effective understudy for almost a decade on various spinoff projects, comes to the fore in Vengeance Most Fowl and, based on the footage ScreenRant has seen, leaves an uncanny imprint on the movie.

Co-director Merlin Crossingham discussed the transition in the wake of Sallis' death:

“For us, it’s not new. We’ve worked with Ben for such a long time. It’s been a gentle handing over of the baton. It’s been a lovely way of him getting to know the character and for us to make it sound seamless.”

Chief Inspector Mackintosh - Peter Kay

Among the returning cast, surprisingly, is Peter Kay as Chief Inspector Mackintosh. Originally appearing as a local PC in Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Mackintosh has received a promotion and handles the spate of robberies emerging through the city (alongside Lauren Patel’s Mukher Jee). Per Nick Park, “There was always an idea to have a policeman character. It was assumed we might not be able to do Mack because Dreamworks have part ownership of Were-Rabbit.” Once the character was unlocked, getting Kay was the matter of a “really grovely letter” to the comedian from the director.

Norbot - Reese Shearsmith

Rounding out the main cast is Reece Shearsmith as the voice of Norbot. Another Northern British comedy icon (a northern accented gnome particularly tickled Nick Park), it’s almost remarkable that Shearsmith, whose The League of Gentlemen and Inside No 9 has skewered British sensibilities in-line with Wallace & Gromit (albeit with a much darker slant), hasn’t crossed paths with Aardman before. Indeed, these qualities are what Crossingham was most impressed with.

“He has a really fascinating mix in the voice he came up with. It’s a balance between innocence with an edge of darkness. And it comes from his own style of comedy. He really understands where you can go with a character. That ability to be duplicitous in one voice is really interesting.”

Stop! Technology In Motion

The New Technology Powering Wallace & Gromit

It’s apt that for a story comically grappling with the dangers of technology that Vengeance Most Fowl presents the most high-tech claymation techniques. While the company has eschewed full-CGI features since 2011’s Arthur Christmas, the traditional claymation has moved forward in leaps and bounds from the process that led to A Grand Day Out taking 6 years to make, leading to an animation production that barely ed 12 months (for a movie almost three times the length).

Gone are the days of plasticine models. Now, characters are first sculpted in clay, then they are scanned and recreated in silicon “made to look like plasticine” (complete with finger smudge imperfections) that’s grafted over a steel armature. Puppet master Frank Harper described them as a “model kit”. Mouths and eyes and other key areas need to be controlled by the artist, but the 180 puppets (with 30 each for the main two characters, and 700 hands for Norbot alone) made for the production follow this logic for control.

Sets are lit using computer-controlled LED systems that can run in real-time or in-time with the animation. Models are on elaborate gimbals to give them movement that would be impossible with frame-by-frame models.

CG even makes an appearance, although perceptability varies. A scene where Gromit gets milk poured on him by one of Wallace’s overzealous inventions straddles the reality line, with CG milk as it pours and clay when on his face. The bubbles in Wallace’s bath, however, were made for real.

To create a shot showing a full army of Norbots, a whole new method of stop-motion had to be created to avoid falling back on digital models or obtuse animator time. According to Crossingham:

“We didn’t have enough puppets. 5 across by 12 deep, it’s a lot of Norbots. And so we managed to make it so we would animate one row and then that row would attached to motion controls. We wanted them all marching in lock-step. We animate the front row, it takes a frame on a composite blue screen, and then the motion control moves it back to the second row, takes a frame, moves it back, takes a frame. And then in comp, they get layered up. And we had to do that because they were going through light, we couldn’t just do one and repeat it.”

Make no mistake. For all the technological augments to methodology that have existed for over 50 years, this is still painstaking work, every aspect of every frame deliberated over by multiple departments. This is “the best animation team we’ve ever had” according to Park, with alumni from movies going all the way back to The Wrong Tros to those who grew up watching it. And the same challenges recur: Lead Animator Carmen Bromfield Mason said the biggest challenge on the movie was maintaining the furrowed brow of CI Mackintosh’s oversized dome; a surprisingly high stakes balance:

“He moves with his eyebrows, and it’s really difficult to get that right shading. And it’s Peter Kay so when it talks, everything is [moving] all the time.”

Above all, everyone involved with Aardman was keen to stress that everything you see in Vengeance Most Fowl is tactile. It’s real, it’s there, even if computer augments are necessary. There’s no denying that Wallace & Gromit in its modern iterations (Were-Rabbit onwards) has a different feel to the 1990s original shorts, a result of increased scope and tools. Yet there remains the same care and respect for the process throughout. Crossingham concedes there are changes in style, but what remains important is that “The world feels familiar and there’s the same feeling in all of them. There’s evolutions, subtleties. Our teams get more accomplished. We ask more from them, they give us more.”

And, on the much-covered plasticine shortage that gained worldwide attention and led to fans sending their own clay to the studio to keep the production rolling, the model making team had this to say:

“There was a big confusion. The supplier we had, they were retiring. We were looking for another supplier, and it was taken out of proportion.”