Avast landlubbers! Heave ho, etc! There's a new trailer for Aardman's latest stop-motion adventure, The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists, and a poster to boot... and it looks several shades of awesome.
brightcove.createExperiences();Empire was lucky enough to make the trip down to Bristol recently for a tour of the production. We can't say too much at this stage but the footage we saw suggests that we're all in for a treat. Chicken Run director (and creator of everyone's favourite box-dweller Morph) Peter Lord is behind the camera.
There's ham-loving buccaneers, a brash seadog played by Ari Gold, a dodo that thinks it's a parrot, a chimpanzee that thinks it's a person, and a pirate ship built out of bits of two other ships bolted together. There's actor-turned-national-hero Hugh Grant as the slightly hapless Pirate Captain, Martin Freeman as his smarter, Gromit-like sidekick, a pirate-loathing Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) and a seriously loopy quest for the prestigious 'Pirate Of The Year' award on Blood Island.
How's all that for a slice of buried gold? We're putting both our gold sovereigns on this being one of next year's gems. The Pirates! is out on March 30, 2012, just in time for half-term. This is one Pirates movie you definitely should see.