‘Wallace And Gromit’ Directors Get Animated About ‘Vengeance Most Fowl’

Stop-motion man and dog Wallace and Gromit are pop culture icons in their native UK and Oscar-winning legends in the US, and their worldwide appeal is undeniable. They remain beloved by fans young and old ever since their groundbreaking debut in 1989's A Grand Day Out, and almost twenty years after their first feature-length film, they're back with a new movie, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

Before having the honor of playing on Britain's BBC One on Christmas Day and debuting on Netflix outside of the UK and IE on Friday, January 3, 2025, it enjoyed its world premiere at the AFI Film Festival at a venue as legendary as the titular stars, the TCL Chinese Theatre.

"I’m still pinching myself," exclaims Nick Park, the film's co-director and the creator of Wallace and Gromit." As that student, A Grand Day Out was my student project. Aardman's Peter Lord and David Sproxton took me under their wing and gave me a corner of the studio to help me finish it if I worked for them part-time. Because I was working part-time, it took me seven years altogether, but the ultimate thing to me was I remember somebody saying when they saw the unfinished thing, 'Wow, that could be on the BBC at Christmas,' and now look."

A New Nemesis And An Old Foe

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl sees inventor Wallace create a "smart gnome" called Norbot, but his canine companion Gromit isn't so sure about it. Things go wrong when Norbot appears to develop a mind of its own, and it turns out there's more to it than a malfunction. Before landing on Netflix, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is enjoying a limited theatrical run.

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"Gnomes have always been a part of the ecosystem. We realized we could film it using Gnome Noir," explains co-director Merlin Crossingham, Aardman's Creative Director. He makes his feature directorial debut with Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl but also worked on the Oscar-winning first feature, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Gnome Noir is a subgenre of movies he and Park came up with. Norbot is voiced by Reece Shearsmith, a British comedian best known for The League of Gentlemen and Inside No. 9.

"It was great having Reese bring him to life," Park recalls. "This is Wallace's invention, so we didn’t want to go with a predictable gnome voice which is a West Country accent or something cute, cheeky, and too squeaky. Reese has got that slightly sinister lean in his voice. I thought it was so funny when we first auditioned with him, and we asked for this gravelly Northern English voice because that might be something of a different take. We're delighted with what came out. Reese acted as a robot, basically. When it got more expressive, it didn't seem to work as well, so he gave us lots of different takes on everything. We had lots to choose from."

Crossingham adds, "That was the thing with Reese. He understood where we were headed. We didn't quite know how to get there, but he helped us find Norbot. We did a little bit of pitching to make it sound like it was coming out of a speaker box, but we wanted to maintain Reese's performance as much as possible. It was very clear that was key to Norbot being a character as much as anything else."

Classic Movies Inspired 'Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl'

While the film contains stacks of movie homages from The Italian Job to The African Queen and Cape Fear, the directors drew inspiration for Norbot from the classic 1960s sci-fi horror movie The Village of the Damned. That was especially true when it came to Norbot's post-turn movements and facial expressions. Did they draw anything from David Bowie's Laughing Gnome?

"Not on purpose, but I remembered it from being a kid in the 70s," Park says. "It was like a field day of puns there for David Bowie in his early days. We tried not to use those because we do find the most common puns are about gnomes or chickens, so that was a challenge to find new puns."

Norbot is Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl's secondary antagonist. The real villain of the piece is a returning fan favorite, Feathers McGraw, who debuted in the 1993 Oscar-winning short film The Wrong Trousers.

"He's got a history with Wallace and Gromit, and he's languishing in prison for 30 years because of them, so it's the perfect thing we needed," Park explains. "It suddenly became personal and a kind of revenge movie. Slowly pitching it, everyone got a chill in the room. They were like, 'Oh boy, this could be really good."

Did they consider giving Feathers, traditionally a non-speaking character, any lines this time? Not for one second.

"Being silent keeps that sense of mystery to him, and it keeps him an enigma, which is so important in these movies from the Wrong Trousers days," Park explains. "We didn't want to toy with or tamper with that too much because it works so well. We keep him stone-cold and minimal. He says everything just by very nuanced movements, and we use the camera or the music."

Crossingham adds, "He doesn't even have the occasional whimper or anything. Gromit doesn't speak, but he has the occasion noise or something, a breath occasionally, but not even that with Feathers."

Here’s How 'Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ Got Its Title

The film's title came relatively late in the process, but the first iterations of the idea for Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl were scratched out almost two decades ago. However, the team wanted to take their time and get it right.

"One thing that's always important to us is that it has to be led by the idea," Park muses. "There has got to be an idea that feels really inspiring, that almost leaps up and grabs and demands to be made. It can't be mediocre or bland, but the idea of Wallace designing a smart gnome to help Gromit in the garden with his garden chores. came to us back around Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I was kicking the idea around for a long time and playing with different routes it could take."

"Gnomes have very much been part of their world, so it wasn't a big step, but in developing it and finding out where it could go, pitching it to colleagues, it became apparent that there needed to be something else. It can't be just about gnomes and technology going wrong again. There needed to be something motivating the gnomes, something more sinister and more personal against Wallace and Gromit. It's funny that it wasn't an obvious idea to start with because we hadn't really been looking for a way to get Feathers back in but there he was. It was like the perfect solution."

The film's title came late in the process, but what followed was an opportunity for the co-directors to use another classic movie trope and get Wallace to say the film's title.

"We were reworking the scene when Feathers is locking them in a cupboard, and Wallace needed to say something to the effect of, 'You can't do this,' but he wasn't going to swear because that's not in his world," Crossingham explains.

"We tried different things," Park recalls. "At one point, it came out of a comedy punch-up meeting, when we were thinking, 'Is that good enough? Will it work? What would Wallace say?' I came up with, 'It's revengeance most foul,' like he got it all mixed up. We went with that as a title, but people found it hard to read, so we eventually dropped that one and went back for Vengeance Most Fowl. There is a nostalgic thing about Wallace and Gromit to do that kind of thing, like an old horror movie, or drama thriller, or even an Ealing comedy."

Mark Burton, who was charged with writing the screenplay, took the notes; the rest is history. So, what would Wallace, a simple man full of ideas, and his dog, Gromit, make of their evolution and the invention of a streaming service like Netflix?

"I think he'd probably think it's pretty whizz," laughs Crossingham. "He's probably not aware of his fame, though."

"I don't think he's aware that he is on television," Park concludes. "Gromit would probably love it. Wallace always reminded me of my dad. When my dad was around, he had a similar thing: he would spend his time in the shed making stuff; he had ideas and just did them and didn't think much about them. Because of the fame of Wallace and Gromit, we'd have the TV cameras round sometimes. My mum was more like Gromit and would hate being on camera, but my dad would love it."