Wallace & Gromit teased their return to the big screen on Wednesday with the trailer and release date for Vengeance Most Fowl, the claymation duo’s newest movie.
Directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham helm the project, which sees the return of evil chicken mastermind Feathers McGraw, back for revenge following his role in the Oscar-winning 1993 short, The Wrong Trousers.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, announced by the BBC this summer, will celebrate its world premiere at AFI Fest on Oct. 27, with a limited theatrical release in December. The film will then hit Netflix globally on Jan. 3.
In the new movie, Gromit’s concern that Wallace is becoming too dependent on his inventions proves justified when Wallace invents a “smart” gnome that seems to develop a mind of its own, per the release. When it emerges that Feathers McGraw might be masterminding things, it falls to Gromit to battle sinister forces and save his master… or Wallace may never be able to invent again!
New and returning castmembers include Ben Whitehead, British comedian Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith, with cameos from Diane Morgan, Adjoa Andoh and Sir Lenny Henry.
Park, the Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit creator, previously said he’d had the idea for a movie about garden gnomes turning bad for more than a decade. “It occurred to me that the single most asked question I get when I meet fans is, will the penguin Feathers McGraw, Wallace and Gromit’s original antagonist from The Wrong Trousers 30 years ago, ever return? We’ve had fun bringing him back in cameo capacities but now, three decades on, it felt like the right time. Then it hit me: What if Feathers was involved with these gnomes?”
