Wallace & Gromit is a British claymation comedy franchise created by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations. The series centres on Wallace, a good-natured, eccentric, and cheese-loving bachelor inventor, and Gromit, his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic dog. It consists of four short films, two feature-length films, and numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The first short film, A Grand Day Out, was finished and released in 1989. Wallace has been voiced by Peter Sallis and Ben Whitehead. While Wallace speaks very often, Gromit is largely silent and has no dialogue, instead communicating through facial expressions and body language.Gromit occasionally makes dog-like noises, such as barks and yelps.
Because of their popularity, the characters have been described as positive international cultural icons of both modern British culture and Britons in general. BBC News called them "some of the best-known and best-loved stars to come out of the UK".Wallace and Gromit's cracking careers. By Ian Youngs. BBC News. Published 10 October 2005. Culture24 outlet ICONS said they have done "more to improve the image of the English world-wide than any officially appointed ambassadors".
Park has stated that he was inspired by his childhood through the 1950s and 1960s in Lancashire in Northern England. The setting is deliberately ambiguous; the overall style resembles the 1960s, but numerous anachronisms abound, such as the use of 21st-century technology. Although Wigan is seen at the end of Wallace's alliterative home address on his letters, his accent comes from the Holme Valley of West Yorkshire, and he is especially fond of Wensleydale cheese (from North Yorkshire).
Their films have been widely praised, with the first three short films, A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995) earning 100% on Rotten Tomatoes; the feature film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) has also received acclaim. The film is the second-highest-grossing stop-motion animated film, outgrossed only by Chicken Run (2000), another creation of Park's. A fourth short film, A Matter of Loaf and Death, was released in 2008. 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. Shaun the Sheep is a spin-off of the franchise, featuring the character introduced in A Close Shave and debuting in 2007. The franchise has received numerous accolades, including seven BAFTAs, three Academy Awards and a Peabody Award.
History
The first short film, A Grand Day Out, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1991. The short films The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave followed, both of which won the aforementioned award. The first full-length feature film, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was released in 2005, and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
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. The fourth Wallace & Gromit short, A Matter of Loaf and Death, was Park's first production since the end of the DreamWorks deal. It was the most-watched television programme in the UK in 2008. A Matter of Loaf and Death won the 2008 BAFTA Award for Best Short Animation and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2010. In 2013, Peter Lord stated that there were no plans at the moment for a new short film, and Park announced in the following year that the declining health of Wallace's voice actor, Peter Sallis, had the possibility of preventing any future films despite the availability of Ben Whitehead.
In May 2017, Lord stated that more projects with the characters were likely while speaking at an animation event in Stuttgart, Germany. He said, "When Nick [Park]'s not drawing cavemen, he's drawing Wallace & Gromit ... I absolutely assume he will do another, but not a feature. I think he found it was too much. I think he liked the half-hour format."
Sallis died on 2 June 2017. 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." In 2019, Park announced that a new Wallace & Gromit project is in development. "I can't give too much away because it would spoil it really, but it's Wallace & Gromit up to their old antics." 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. It features the voices of Miriam Margolyes, Isy Suttie and Jim Carter and was released on 18 January 2021.
In September 2021, a bronze bench statue of Wallace & Gromit was unveiled in Preston, Lancashire, Park's home town. A statue of Feathers McGraw was later added as part of an extension in February 2025. In January 2022, a new feature film, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, was announced, which debuted first on the BBC on Christmas Day 2024, and was released worldwide on Netflix on 3 January 2025, winning two awards at the 78th British Academy Film Awards and additionally being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
A Lego Ideas set of Wallace and Gromit's motorcycle from A Close Shave will be released on 1 October 2026, created by user Pidelium as part of the LEGO Ideas "90s Throwback - The Next Chapter!" contest. It is the first Lego set based on the works of Aardman.
Overview
Wallace Wallace lives with his pet dog Gromit at No. 62 West Wallaby Street in Wigan, England.
He usually wears brown woollen trousers, a white shirt with detachable sleeves, and a red tie under a green vee-necked knitted sleeveless sweater. He is fond of cheese, especially Wensleydale, with crackers.Wallace has trouble dropping through a trapdoor into his dining room in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and has to go on a salad-heavy diet
Nick Park, his creator, said: "He's a very self-contained figure. A very homely sort who doesn't mind the odd adventure." He is loosely based on Park's father and Park has never made it clear as to whether Wallace is the character's forename or surname, preferring to leave this ambiguous.Wallace & Gromit – Wallacesee: special features on the Wallace and Gromit: The Complete Collection DVD and blu-ray releases
Wallace was voiced by Peter Sallis until his retirement in 2010, being succeeded by Ben Whitehead.
Wallace is an inveterate inventor, creating elaborate contraptions that often do not work wholly as intended. 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 "sledge-hammer to crack a nut". Some of Wallace's contraptions are based on real-life inventions. For example, his method of waking up in the morning uses a bed that tips up to wake up its owner, an invention that was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 by Theophilus Carter.
Wallace has had three romantic interests. The first was wool shop owner Wendolene Ramsbottom, which ended quickly when Wendolene told Wallace that she was allergic to some cheese. The second was Lady Campanula Tottington in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, whom Wallace fondly calls "Totty". In A Matter of Loaf & Death, Wallace becomes engaged to Piella Bakewell, who turns out to be a serial killer of bakers.
Gromit
Gromit is a dog with a cream-coloured short-hair coat and oversized, floppy, dark brown ears, who is Wallace's pet and best friend. He is very intelligent, having graduated from "Dogwarts University" ("Dogwarts" being a pun on "Hogwarts", the wizard school from the Harry Potter books) with a double first in Engineering for Dogs.Wallace & Gromit: Annual 2007 He likes knitting, playing chess, reading the newspaper, tea, and cooking. His prized possessions include his alarm clock, dog bone, brush, and a framed photo of himself with Wallace. He is very adept with electronic equipment and an excellent aeroplane pilot. He often threatens the plans of the antagonists he and Wallace encounter in their adventures. Sometimes, Gromit ignores Wallace's orders, such as in A Close Shave and Shopper 13, where Wallace orders him to get rid of Shaun but Gromit does not. Gromit's birthday is 12 February. In The Wrong Trousers, he is seen circling the date on a calendar.
Gromit has no visible mouth and expresses himself through facial expressions and body language. Peter Hawkins originally intended to voice Gromit, but Park dropped the idea when he realised how Gromit's thoughts and feelings could be displayed through movement with some canine noises on rare occasions. Many critics believe that Gromit's silence makes him the perfect straight man, with a pantomime expressiveness that drew favourable comparisons to Buster Keaton. He does at times make dog-like noises, such as yelps and growling. 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.
Generally speaking, Gromit's tastes are more in vogue than those of Wallace; this being one of the many ways they contrast with each other as characters. Gromit seems to have a significant interest in encyclopaedic, classical and philosophical literature, and popular culture, including film and music. 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. In Vengeance Most Fowl, he is shown reading A Room of One's Own, by "Virginia Woof" (a pun on Virginia Woolf), and Paradise Lost, by "John Stilton" (a pun on John Milton). His taste in music has been shown to cover Bach (presumably punning on "bark"), "Poochini" (a play on Puccini), "McFlea" (McFly), "The Beagles" (the Beatles), "Red Hot Chili Puppies" (Red Hot Chili Peppers), "Puppy Love" by Doggy Osmond (Donny Osmond), "The Hound of Music" (The Sound of Music) and "Walkies on the Wild Side" by Rod Lead.
Gromit gains his own love interest in A Matter of Loaf and Death, when he becomes attached to Fluffles, a poodle.
NASA named one of its new prototype Mars explorer robots after Gromit in 2005. 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.
Location
Although not overtly setting the series in any particular town, Nick Park had previously hinted that its milieu was inspired by thoughts of 1950s Wigan, reinforced by an A–Z Wigan being displayed on Wallace's Anti-Pesto van in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. In The Wrong Trousers, Gromit picks up a letter at their house addressed to "62 West Wallaby Street, Wigan". The address includes a postcode of WG7 3FU, though this does not match any street in the United Kingdom; Wigan postcodes begin with the letters WN. This address can be seen in the Cracking Contraptions episode "Shopper 13".