Being made of clay will not keep the stars of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit movie from seeking an Oscar, says their creator, Nick Park.
Park was denied a prize for his last clay animation movie, Chicken Run, in 2000, despite being widely acclaimed, because the Academy Awards did not have a category for best animation motion picture then. It has since been added.
“I do like shiny pieces of metal,” Park said at the North American premiere of his first feature-length film starring the screwball inventor and his clever dog at the Toronto International Film Festival.
But, the plasticine duo, who team up with Helena Bonham Carter as Wallace’s love interest and Ralph Fiennes as the antagonist in their latest adventure about rabbits devastating a town’s vegetable plots, will have some tough competition.
Tim Burton’s macabre Corpse Bride, about a bungled arranged marriage, which also made its North American premiere in Toronto this month, and the wildly popular Madagascar, about zoo animals trying to escape the urban jungle and starring Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer and Chris Rock, will also compete for an Oscar in this category.
Regardless, Wallace and Gromit are now too comfortable with their “A-list” actor status to return to short films, having attracted a cult following since first appearing in a short in 1989 and six more since, so expect to see them star in more feature films, Park said.
About 30 animators and 250 crew worked for two years to complete Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, managing to shoot less than three seconds of complicated film each day.
In contrast, Nick Park worked alone for seven years to complete the first short about the characters he created as a school project at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England.
“It’s a dream come true [to bring them to the silver screen], but it’s not been an overnight success,” he said. — AFP