Project Detail

Pirates!

Synopsis

Pirates! is a swashbuckling adventure with a rich vein of surreal and broad comedy, based upon The Pirates! (in an Adventure with Scientists), from the bestselling series of books by Gideon Defoe. The movie will be created with the same beautiful hand-crafted technique that Aardman brought to the feature films Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Chicken Run. The story follows the fortunes of a cheerful but hapless pirate band as they cross the seven seas in search of the thing pirates love best: adventure. And what greater adventure can there be than battling Black Bellamy and Cutlass Liz in an attempt to win the coveted Pirate of the Year trophy? From the Caribbean, their journey takes them to Victorian London, where they encounter Charles Darwin, an articulate ‘man-panzee’ named Mister Bobo, and an all-powerful enemy determined to wipe out pirates forever. The pirates find that their quest is a victory for good-natured optimism over the boring forces of common sense.

Details

Year
2011
Type of project
Features
Director
Peter Lord, Jeff Newitt
Producer
Julie Lockhart
Screenwriter
Gideon Defoe
Principal cast
Brendan Gleeson, Jeremy Piven

Categories

Production Status

Production Company

Aardman Animation

Sales Company

Sony Pictures

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

A crooked angle close up of an animated character looking angrily into the distance. Lola has black messy hair and grubby pale skin. She has large green eyes and wears broken dungarees. Meat

Director: Gemma Rigg

Year: 2026

A feral child befriends a stray dog in a lonely post-apocalyptic world, but at what cost? A stop motion animation set in a post-apocalyptic abandoned village where survivors forage for food through rubble and ruins. Amongst them is Lola, a lonely feral orphan. Her life is changed forever when she detangles a starving stray dog from a plastic bag. Her new friend fills her world with fleeting warmth and she shares what little food she has. But it’s not for a dog, even a starved one. His his tummy rumbles as he sleeps by her side. The dog is gone by morning, leaving a broken-hearted Lola to search all day for her new friend. She finally discovers the disloyal lurcher munching eagerly on a rival survivor's fresh meaty finds. Lola's sweet revenge is served warm, on a silver platter, to the grateful mutt. But what is the true price of this loyalty?

Two girls underwater: one blows bubble rings while the other reaches out to pass through them Deep End

Director: Puzhen Zhang

Year: 2026

One summer in early 2000s China, a shy preteen girl confronts her fear of water — and human connection — when she forms an unexpected, magical bond in the deep end of the pool.

toledo and heavenly body by the pool Niceland

Director: Julian Gallese

Year: 2026

Heavenly Body is old, and seeks a calm time away from fans to reflect before his last show. As his long-awaited presence descends upon Niceland, a gloomy tropical town where everyone is obsessed with him, its flawed but endearing inhabitants struggle to get tickets. Just before the show, an unlikely friendship leads up to a tragic miracle.