The Wrong Trousers

From Sci-Fi Weekly

DreamWorks unveiled the first 15 minutes of its upcoming feature-length stop-motion animated film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit to reporters on Aug. 5, though the movie is still being completed.

In the movie, the cheese-loving Wallace and his silent but smart dog Gromit battle garden-attacking rabbits as well as an evil were-rabbit who comes out when the moon is full.

Terry Press, a marketing executive for DreamWorks, said the film is being completed by Aardman Animations, the same team that created the hit Chicken Run, and that they are working full-time to finish the film. "There are 30 sets with 30 animators each working for a week for three seconds of footage," Press said. The plasticine (not clay) models are about one-eighth scale, and a few of the models were on display at the DreamWorks studios in Glendale, Calif.

DreamWorks chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said he was amazed as he watched director Nick Park and his crew of 250 people work on the movie with "the most painstaking craftsmanship and precision. I've been such a fan of these shorts over the years. Nick Park and his team have such amazing creativity."

Park won two Academy Awards for best animated short for his Wallace & Gromit films. The Wrong Trousers in 1993 and A Close Shave in 1996 won Oscars, and A Grand Day Out was nominated in 1991.

The new movie centers on the duo's efforts to save a neighborhood from ravaging rabbits with a pest-control company called Anti-Pesto. With the Giant Vegetable Competition looming the next week, neighbors are protecting their giant pumpkin, and Gromit has his prized super-sized cucumber. They are awakened by a funny Rube Goldberg contraption that is triggered by a garden gnome that gets them out of bed, fixes them coffee and gets them on their way to the pending emergency.

The head of the competition, Lady Tottington (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter), calls the team over to suck the rabbits off her estate. But they accidentally suck in her fiance, Lord Victor Quartermaine (voiced by Ralph Fiennes), and get him stuck in their pest vacuuming contraption.

"We're just in the last part of getting the movie finished," Katzenberg said. "We are very proud of it, and hope you enjoy it." The G-rated movie will be supported by a video game being released by Atari around the same time as the film's Oct. 6 release.