Fire Destroys Aardman Animations Warehouse

By Rich Drees

Aardman Animations' Nick Park with Wallace and Gromit.

     While Aardman Animations’ newest release, Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, was premiering at the top of the box office charts, the company suffered a setback this weekend when a warehouse containing sets and props from the company’s entire 30 year history burned to the ground, destroying everything stored inside.

     The fire broke out in the Bristol, England warehouse at approximately 5:30 a.m. local time on Monday morning and quickly spread throughout the building’s three floors. The heat was so intense that firefighters were forced to battle the blaze from outside the building. Flames were reported to have reached over 100 hundred feet high. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

     "Today was supposed to be a day of celebration, with the news that Wallace and Gromit had gone number one at the U.S. box office, but instead our whole history has been wiped out," Aardman spokesman Arthur Sheriff said in a statement. "It's turned out to be a terrible day."

     Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, the studio’s second feature length, animated film, opened this past weekend at the number one box office position, earning $16.1 million. The film is set to open this Friday in Great Britain.

     According to Sheriff, the warehouse held props and memorabilia dating back to the studio’s 1976 founding including material from the BBC children’s series The Amazing Adventures Of Morph, the Oscar-winning short film Creature Comforts (1989) and Aardman’s first feature length film Chicken Run (2000). Also destroyed in the fire were the sets from the three earlier Wallace and Gromit short films- A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995). Trousers and Shave both won Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film. Material from the new Wallace and Gromit film had not been moved to the storage facility.

     Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park, who joined the studio in 1986 directly out of college, was more sanguine about the fire. “Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn't a big deal," Park said, referring to the earthquake which devastated South Asia this weekend.

     Aardman Animations was founded in 1976 by Peter Lord and Dave Sproxton after selling a 20-second animated clip to the BBC series VisionOn. Their series, The Amazing Adventures Of Morph, which premiered in 1980, quickly established them as one of the lead animation houses in England. In addition to the numerous short films that the company produced, it also helped create the memorable music video for Peter Gabriel’s song “Sledgehammer.”