Wallace and Gromit’s creator, Nick Park, has shared the most difficult part about working on the franchise’s latest production, Vengeance Most Fowl.
Park, 66, is the mastermind behind the stop-motion animated comedy about Wallace, a cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his loyal beagle.
The Academy Award winning films originally starred Peter Sallis, who first agreed to do the role in exchange for a £50 donation to a children’s charity. Once the franchise took off, he became the regular lead in the popular films, also acting as the eccentric creator in adverts and video games on occasion. Sallis died in 2017, aged 96.
Vengeance Most Fowl is the first film to be released in the series in ten years, and its creators have warned it will “make everybody cry”. Park said that it had been difficult to work on it without its veteran star, Sallis.
“It has been quite emotional [doing this production] since we lost Peter, he was such an original, unique voice,” he told the BBC.
“So it’s very hard for anyone to step into his shoes. But we have been blessed with a youngish actor whom we’ve known for many years who can do a fantastic Wallace impersonation.
“He’s stepped in very kindly, and is just great. It’s hard to tell them apart.”
Sallis will be replaced by Ben Whitehead, 47, who worked with Sallis on the Oscar-winning 2005 film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
“Enormous pressure!” Whitehead said of his feelings about stepping into his shoes.
“Because it’s a very popular character. I got to work with Peter [Sallis] a couple of times for [2005’s] The Curse of the Were-Rabbit film.
“So yeah, there’s a great deal of pressure with that. And I feel very grateful to Aardman [animation studio] for giving me so much time to build the character.
“You kind of have to do the ‘hmm’ and the ‘hee-hee’,” he said. “Definitely the elongation of the vowels like ‘cheeeeese’!”
In a four-star review, The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey, wrote: “Vengeance Most Fowl is proof the traditional can still thrive – not only in how a film looks, but even in the barrage of puns (one magazine reads: “Gardens of the Galaxy”) and corny dad jokes.
“There are some timely updates, including a pitch-perfect gag about online Captcha verification tests. But I’m not sure any other studio could get away quite so cleanly with dropping a Shawshank Redemption prison gag in the year 2024. That’s how you know Aardman has earned a privileged place in British culture.”
‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ screens on Christmas Day on the BBC in the UK, and arrives on Netflix internationally on 3 January
