A fire at a warehouse in England on Monday destroyed all the sets, props and models in the Wallace and Gromit films, just after the latest release hit number one at the United States box office, Aardman Animations said.
The pre-dawn fire tore through the building in Bristol, south-west England, that housed all the props and sets from Morph to the Wallace and Gromit films, said Arthur Sheriff, a spokesperson for Aardman Animations.
It appeared that ”our whole history has been wiped out”, he added.
Morph was the little plasticine man that featured in the Eighties TV show The Amazing Adventures of Morph, narrated by Tony Hart.
”The early reports are that the whole building has been destroyed. For us, it held everything we had done since day one. Everything from Morph to Creature Comforts [the 1989 animated short about animals in a zoo] to Wallace and Gromit was there,” he said.
Avon fire service spokesperson Geoff Cater said: ”All three floors inside have collapsed and the exterior walls are unstable.”
Aardman’s latest production, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was the top box-office draw in the US this weekend, taking in about $16,1-million in its North American debut, according to industry estimates on Sunday. — Sapa-AFP