The first trailer for Aardman’s 2012 stop-motion feature The Pirates! Band of Misifts has been unveiled online, and it looks great! Read on to watch!

As usual, Apple has all the HD encodes you could wish for.

The Pirates! features a fantastic cast of voices: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen, Russell Tovey, Salma Hayek, Imelda Staunton and David Tennant, and a press release back in May summarised the plot as follows:

Hugh Grant, starring in his first animated role, is the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas.  With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award.  It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London.  Along the way they do battle with the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) and team up with a young Charles Darwin (David Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!

It’s based on the book The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe, and is being directed by Peter Lord (Aardman veteran and co-director of Chicken Run).

I’m an enormous fan of Aardman (Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is one of my all-time favourite movies), and stop-motion is my favourite type of animation. Plus, it tends to actually look brilliant in 3D, if Coraline was anything to go by. The Pirates! looks like a huge amount of fun, and I can’t wait for it – even if all it does is wash away the sour, sour taste of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, it will have done a good job.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits is due out on 28th March next year in the UK, and 30th March in the US.

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The first trailer for the remake of the 1985 cult classic Fright Night has appeared online, and it looks pretty good. This movie stars Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, David Tennant, Imogen Poots and Toni Collett, and is directed by Craig Gillespie who will soon be taking on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for Lionsgate.

Watch the trailer below:

Senior Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) finally has it all—he’s running with the popular crowd and dating the hottest girl in high school. In fact, he’s so cool he’s even dissing his best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). But trouble arrives when an intriguing stranger Jerry (Colin Farrell) moves in next door. He seems like a great guy at first, but there’s something not quite right—and everyone, including Charlie’s mom (Toni Collette), doesn’t notice. After witnessing some very unusual activity, Charlie comes to an unmistakable conclusion: Jerry is a vampire preying on his neighborhood. Unable to convince anyone that he’s telling the truth, Charlie has to find a way to get rid of the monster himself in this Craig Gillespie-helmed revamp of the comedy-horror classic.

Fright Night hits August 13th, 2011.

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More stop-motion goodness! Hot on the heels of LAIKA’s announcement of ParaNorman for 2012, Aardman Animations have issued a press release for their film The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. Hit the continue reading button to…continue reading.

The film is due out on March 30th 2012 in the UK, and will be the first stop-motion feature from Aardman since 2005′s fantastic Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It’s being developed for Sony Pictures Animation, and will be distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Again, animated movies always have a hell of a cast, and this one has a large array of mostly British talent, all of whom should be great in their roles: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen, Russell Tovey, Salma Hayek, Imelda Staunton and David Tennant. It’s certainly going to be lively. The press release summarises the plot of the movie in the following:

Hugh Grant, starring in his first animated role, is the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas.  With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award.  It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London.  Along the way they do battle with the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) and team up with a young Charles Darwin (David Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!

It sounds like it will have the humour and charm present in Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, and basically everything else Aardman have done.

You can see basically all of the image above, but for purists, here’s the larger version:

I’m loving the style that’s going on here. And The Pirates! will also be released in 3D. Usually I sigh at that being tagged onto an announcement, but considering Coraline was the best film I’ve seen in 3D (Harry at AICN agrees) by a mile, this should be beautiful too.

Aardman Animations are also currently working on a CGI project for Sony Pictures Animation; Arthur Christmas, which is due out on November 11th this year in the UK, and November 23rd in the US. It also boasts a great list of voice actors: James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, and again, Ashley Jensen and Imelda Staunton. It tells the story of Father Christmas’s son, and while I’m sure it’ll be a large amount of fun, my fondness for stop-motion makes me much more excited for The Pirates!

So, I can’t wait for this. I first read about it back in a large press release from Aardman in 2007. Stop-motion is my absolute favourite type of animation, and there truly isn’t enough of it. The detail and care that usually goes into it makes it a joy to behold. Aardman in particular continue to release quality products, so this is high up on my list of anticipated movies. What with LAIKA’s ParaNorman too…2012 is looking good.

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And so the casting speculation begins. Now that Peter Jackson has a February start date for The Hobbit he can begin offering roles to actors, which he may have been doing for a while, but now things start getting official.

According to Deadline “Martin Freeman will soon be set to play Bilbo Baggins”, Irish actor “Jimmy Nesbitt has been offered a role” and “Michael Fassbender is being pursued for another as is David Tennant”.

We heard from Freeman earlier this week who said, scheduling conflicts aside, he’s up for it. Doctor Who actor David Tennant was one of those names linked to the Bilbo role when wild casting speculation was rampant, but it may have been the case that they wanted him for another part instead.

James Nesbitt (Left) - David Tennant (Right)

James Nesbitt is well known in the UK for his TV roles, and he appeared in Bloody Sunday in 2002 (directed by Bourne director Paul Greengrass). I can easily see him playing a dwarf (13 dwarves will appear in the film prominently if they decide to include them all).

The more interesting name mention is that of Michael Fassbender, who is currently filming X-Men: First Class as Magneto. Should he join the film, he may star opposite Ian McKellan who we all know played the Master of Magnetism in the X-Men trilogy. I’m sure everyone’s inner geek would love to see that.

With dwarves, wizards and elves requiring actors all we can do is speculate until specific roles are confirmed. I’m liking all of the names mentioned above though, and would be happy to see them all appear in The Hobbit.

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Last month The Hobbit director Guillermo del Toro said that they were “very close to saying one name”, having narrowed down the search for Bilbo Baggins from 4 possible actors, and that he expected to make an announcement in the next few weeks. Well it’s been more than a month now and we are still none the wiser. However, over the past few days casting speculation has been flying around the internet suggesting that either Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), James McAvoy (Wanted) or David Tennant (Doctor Who) will land the role and that an announcement will be made at the San Diego Comic Con next week.

When I read the names of the ‘possible candidates’ I immediately ruled out Radcliffe. The Hobbit will start filming next March and Mr. Potter has a franchise he needs to finish. It won’t work. Thankfully Peter Jackson has squashed these rumors as he revealed to Empire that no announcement will be made next week, but they are starting to think about casting:

“No, we won’t be announcing Bilbo for a little while,” he said when we asked about a Comic-Con announcement. “We’re starting to think about casting, but we’re knee-deep in the script right now. And when we do go to actors, they’re probably going to ask to see a script, so we’re powering ahead with getting the first draft done.”

So we have Guillermo del Toro saying they have narrowed the search down to one actor and we will know within weeks, and then we have Peter Jackson saying that they were just starting to think about casting. It appears we have conflicting reports here. Whatever the case is i’m sure they know what they are doing and they will make an announcement when they are ready.

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Doctor Who is probably Britain’s biggest TV show (apart from those Simon Cowell makes) and is broadcast weekly in 42 countries around the world, so with such a large fan base it wouldn’t be shock to learn that BBC Film are quietly working on a movie version of the show. Unlike Lost and other shows that could potentially spawn a movie, Doctor Who episodes have no strict links between them, and the TV specials being shown throughout this year prove that the Doctor can appear just about anywhere, which makes a movie version more viable.

Buried at the bottom of a Doctor Who related BBC article we get:

David Tennant will firstly appear in three specials, starting with The Waters of Mars in November.

Meanwhile, Doctor Who may be heading for the big screen after a spokeswoman for BBC Films confirmed that “a script is in development”.

BBC entertainment correspondent Lizo Mzimba said there were no guarantees a film would be made and that, if the project went into full production, a release would be a long time away.

So if it eventually happens David Tennant probably won’t be the Doctor, instead it may be Matt Smith who will take over the role in 2010.

Steven Moffat, who co-wrote The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn for Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, will be taking over Russell T Davies’ job as head writer and executive produce for future series, so he would be a great candidate to write the script for the movie.

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