Arthur Christmas

Aardman announced the project in 2007 as Operation Rudolph, its first film under the Sony deal that followed the DreamWorks split. Sarah Smith had worked mainly in live action television, so Barry Cook joined in February 2009 as co-director. Cook describes his brief as help on the animation side, from designing the film and its characters through the whole storyboarding process. Story and design took eighteen months in Britain before production moved to Sony’s Culver City studio for another eighteen. Michael Giacchino and Adam Cohen were originally attached to the score; Harry Gregson-Williams took it over in September 2011, under two months before the American opening. Six nominations at the 39th Annie Awards produced one win: Bill Nighy for voicing Grandsanta, with Ashley Jensen nominated in the same category. Its Golden Globe animation nomination lost to The Adventures of Tintin and its BAFTA one to Rango, while the San Diego Film Critics Society picked this film over Rango as animated feature of the year. A good fit if you want Santa treated as an inherited title rather than one man, with the delivery run staged as a single night managed from a control room. Not for viewers expecting Aardman’s clay stop motion; this is the studio’s second computer animated feature, after Flushed Away.