Sony Pictures’ The Pirates! Band of Misfits have launched a new interactive site with lots of visual goodies for fans of The Pirates! and Aardman Animation. If you’re not familiar with the name, you’ll probably still recognize their previous works, such as Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run and Flushed Away. Aardman has a unique and appealing animation style that Steve got to take and up-close-and-personal look at when he visited the set.

Directed by Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt (Chicken Run), The Pirates! Band of Misfits stars Hugh Grant, in his first animated role, as the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain who is trying to win the Pirate Of The Year Award with the help of his rag-tag crew (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen).  To win, Pirate Captain must contend with a diabolical queen (Imelda Staunton) and bitter rivals like Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek). The Pirates! Band of Misfits opens April 27th. Hit the jump to meet the pirates. 

Aardman Animation has assembled an impressive voice cast for their upcoming stop-motion 3D animated film The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.  Variety reports that Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Salma Hayek, David Tennant, Imelda Staunton, Jeremy Piven, Brendan Gleeson, Brian Blessed, and Ashley Jensen will all lend their voices to the film.  The movie will be the first voice acting role for Grant and he’ll play the lead role of a “bearded Pirate Captain who travels far and wide in a quest to win the much coveted Pirate of the Year Award.”  I’m already smiling at the thought of someone with Grant’s signature foppish, befuddled delivery playing a pirate.   Chicken Run co-director Peter Lord will direct alongside Jeff Newitt.

While Pixar is usually dubbed the “Animation Studio with the Perfect Track Record” I’ve always been incredibly charmed by Aardman’s films.  They’ve only done three feature films to date (Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Flushed Away) and I’ve enjoyed all of them.  Their latest film, Arthur Christmas, opens in 3D on November 23rd.