Hey folks, Harry here... Well - so begins the next chapter in the magical stop-motion world of Aardman. After the Wererabbit and Flushed Away failed to excite US audiences at the box office, I found Dreamworks' lack of faith... disturbing.

Aardman is a magical company that has continually delivered brilliant animated work. Heck - even the unfortunately named FLUSHED AWAY - they made pixels charming and funny and timeless.

Well Sony snatched Aardman up wisely - and now they've announced their first film they're developing - and they're calling it a "family-friendly Tarantino" - here's what Variety has to say about it:

...has signed writers Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah ("Life on Mars") to work with director Steve Box on comedy heist "The Cat Burglars." The film about milk-thieving stray cats will be in Aardman's trademark stop-frame claymation and combine the comedy action of Nick Park and Box's "Wallace & Gromit" feature with the cool styling of "Ocean's Eleven," Aardman says. Box promises auds something altogether new -- "family-friendly Tarantino."

After that - Peter Lord is doing an adaptation of Gideon DeFoe's THE PIRATES! books like this one:

There's all sorts of these books - the PIRATES don't just have adventures with Communists - they also adventure with Scientists, Ahab and Whaling, All I know is it sounds like the sort of books you should pick up for your kids. They need to have adventures with pirates, communists, a guy named Ahab and well... every kid should want to hunt whales... right? Heh.

Then there's OPERATION RUDOLPH, which is being written by one of those Academy Award nominated writers of BORAT (Peter Baynham) - who is writing an action Christmas night film about the militaristic operations by Santa Claus and his army of combat elves to deliver presents around the world in a single night.

Lastly... and most excitedly - Super Genius... Nick Park is developing another piece of brain-nip for us animation junkies. Nothing is known about this film... but it could be called "..." by Nick Park and I'd be trembling and screaming... "PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD!!!! FUCKING A! MAN!"

Exciting times - more Aardman for those of us that love em!