Script Rethink Forces Aardman Halt

Aardman Animations' big budget follow-up to Chicken Run has been put on hold for six months, resulting in around 90 redundancies. The Tortoise And The Hare is to be based on the Aesop fable and will star the vocal talents of Paul Whitehouse, Brenda Blethlyn and Bob Hoskins, but problems with the script has caused a rethink at the Bristol-based studios. "We'd rather put a film on hold than release an average product," spokesman Arthur Sherriff told Empire Online today (5 July). "We want to make a much better film than Chicken Run, but the problem was the story wasn't translating from script to screen." Sherriff explained that the problems lay in making the characters rounded and believable enough to make them convincing when rendered in Aardman's trademark plasticine. "To give you a corny example," he said, "in Chicken Run, when Rocky arrives, he's a rogue - a has-been, a dubious character. But the audience likes him and that's down to the combination of the performance with the script. With The Tortoise And The Hare, we felt that this wasn't happening, because let's face it, getting animals to act like humans is difficult! In some ways, we're prisoners to our own work." Out of a crew of 172, approximately 90 people are to be made redundant. The announcement was made by a clearly upset Peter Lord, Aardman's co-owner and creative director on the project. "Peter only just managed to deliver his speech," said Sherriff. "But the crew applauded him, because everyone knows that it's important for the film to have that Aardman magic. We're devastated - it's the first time it's happened to us, but we hope to be back on track in six months, hopefully less. "However, it's important to remember that Toy Story stopped production and they claimed it was the best thing that happened to the project. And we all know how that turned out. Shrek, as well, stopped production twice, once for a whole year." Sherriff also denied that the film had been postponed in favour of the forthcoming Wallace And Gromit movie, which was to be "fast tracked" into cinemas, emphasising that Aardman's Oscar winning director Nick Park had nothing to do with The Tortoise And The Hare. "We've still got a heck of a lot to learn," he concluded, "but the talent is still there and it's our hope that all the people laid off will come back. It ain't the end of the world, and we will get over it."