Wallace & Gromit

A second full-length feature film, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl — marking the return of the penguin Feathers McGraw, the villain from The Wrong Trousers — was released in 2024.

In January 2007, a five-film deal with DreamWorks and Aardman fell through after three films, due to creative differences, as well as the box office failure of Flushed Away.

Park said later that DreamWorks executives wanted to Americanise the very British Wallace and Gromit after test screenings, which would have tarnished some of the duo's nostalgic charm.

[10] In 2018, Park said to Radio Times: "[Sallis] was such a special one-off person with such unique qualities, it would be hard to fill his shoes but I think he'd want us to carry on and I've got more Wallace and Gromit ideas.

"[12][13] In May 2020, Aardman announced the release of The Big Fix Up, a Wallace & Gromit story in the form of an augmented reality (AR) mobile app.

He usually wears brown woollen trousers, a white shirt with detachable sleeves, and a red tie under a green vee-necked knitted sleeveless sweater.

Their appearance is similar to the illustrations of W. Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg, where Nick Park has said of Wallace that all his inventions are designed around the principle of using a "sledgehammer to crack a nut".

Gromit is a beagle, with a cream-coloured short-hair coat and oversized floppy dark brown ears, who is Wallace's pet dog and best friend.

[32][33] Many critics believe that Gromit's silence makes him the perfect straight man, with a pantomime expressiveness that drew favourable comparisons to Buster Keaton.

[35] According to the fortieth anniversary documentary A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman, Gromit was originally supposed to be a cat, but the idea was dropped as Park realised that animating a dog was easier.

Electronics for Dogs has been a firm favourite since A Grand Day Out, and in The Wrong Trousers Gromit's bookshelves feature titles such as Kites, Sticks, Sheep, Penguins, Rockets, Bones and Stars, while he is seen reading The Republic, by Pluto (a nod to the Disney character of the same name and a pun on Plato) and Crime and Punishment, by Fido Dogstoyevsky (a pun on Fyodor Dostoyevsky).

Gromit's various possessions make extensive use of puns: A Matter of Loaf and Death features "Pup Fiction" (Pulp Fiction), "The Dogfather" (The Godfather), "Where Beagles Dare" (Where Eagles Dare), "Bite Club" (Fight Club) and "The Bone Identity" (The Bourne Identity) all as book titles, and "Citizen Canine" (Citizen Kane) as a film poster.

[36] On 1 April 2007, HMV announced that Gromit would stand in for Nipper for a three-month period, promoting children's DVDs in its UK stores.

The episode references famous English footballers of the 1950s and '60s, including Nobby Stiles, Tom Finney and Bill Shankly (all of whom played for Preston in their careers) as well as Geoff Hurst and Stanley Matthews.

[80] Some effects, particularly the fire, smoke and floating bunnies in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, proved impossible to create in stop motion and were rendered by computer animation specialists, MPC film.

In 2005, a video game of The Curse of The Were-Rabbit was released for PlayStation 2 and Xbox, following the plot of the film as Wallace and Gromit work as vermin-catchers, protecting customers' vegetable gardens from rabbits, using a "BunGun".

British publisher Titan Magazines started producing a monthly Wallace & Gromit comic after the debut of Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

[103] It is credited to Titan and Aardman, with scripts written by Richy Chandler, Robert Etherington, Mike Garley, Ned Hartley, Rik Hoskin, David Leach, Luke Paton, J.P. Rutter, Rona Simpson and Gordon Volke, art by Sylvia Bennion, Jay Clarke, Jimmy Hansen, Viv Heath, Mychailo Kazybrid and Brian Williamson.

[107] This show featured Feathers McGraw escaping prison and hypnotising Wendolene to assist in his planned revenge on the duo, culminating in a showdown involving Shaun the Sheep donning the Techno-Trousers.

Later Wallace & Gromit commercials were made for Jacob's Cream Crackers, energy supplier Npower and beverage PG Tips.

The pictures show them, and Lady Tottington from Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, wearing designer clothes and items.

[18][111] On 28 March 2009, The Science Museum in London opened an exhibition called "Wallace & Gromit present a World of Cracking Ideas".

[112] In December 2010, Wallace and Gromit featured on series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail for Christmas.

[117][118] In 2012, Wallace and Gromit featured on an advert saying "Inventing For Britain" which was part of a poster campaign to promote British trade and business aboard in the year they hosted the Olympics.

[122] From 29 November to 31 December 2024, a six-minute Wallace & Gromit animation was projected onto London's Battersea Power Station every evening, as part of Apple's Shot on iPhone marketing campaign.

Characters from the films featured on Bisto products, with consumers offered the chance to win a lab-grown blue diamond worth £1,500.

In July 2013, 80 giant fibreglass decorated sculptures of Gromit were distributed around Bristol as part of a Nick Park-inspired project to raise funds for the charity.

The project is named Gromit Unleashed and sculptures were decorated by a range of artists and celebrities, including Joanna Lumley, Sir Peter Blake, Trevor Baylis and Jools Holland.

The ride lasts almost four minutes, and features scenes from A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and A Matter of Loaf and Death along with some archive audio and some newly recorded lines from Ben Whitehead as the voice of Wallace.

In each episode, their latest attempt to add excitement to their dull mundane life as livestock somehow snowballs into a fantastic sitcom-style escapade, most often with the help of their fascination with human doings and devices.

Creator Nick Park with his characters in 2005 promoting Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Wallace and Gromit bronze sculpture in Park's home town of Preston, Lancashire , England.
Wallace, with his dog Gromit, the main characters of the franchise
Gromit sorts the post at his house where he hopes to find a birthday card (scene from The Wrong Trousers ).
Museum set from The Wrong Trousers , on display at the National Media Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire
The "Bark at 'Ee" sculpture, one of 80 giant fibreglass sculptures of Gromit decorated for the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity.