Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

As Tottington Hall's annual giant vegetable competition approaches, cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his intelligent beagle Gromit provide a humane pest control business known as "Anti-Pesto," protecting the townspeople's vegetables from pests, including rabbits. One evening after capturing rabbits found in Lady Tottington's garden, Wallace uses two of his latest inventions, the "Bun-Vac 6000" and "Mind Manipulation-O-Matic," to brainwash them into hating vegetables. All goes well until Wallace accidentally sets the Bun-Vac to "BLOW," and his brain is fused with a rabbit's, forcing Gromit to destroy the Mind-O-Matic. The transfer appears to have worked, as the rabbit shows no interest in vegetables. They name the rabbit Hutch and place him in a cage.

That night, a giant rabbit devours many of the town's vegetables and the duo fail to respond. During a town meeting the next day, the creature is revealed as the legendary Were-Rabbit. The hunter Lord Victor Quartermaine offers to shoot the creature, but Tottington persuades the townsfolk to give Anti-Pesto a second chance. Wallace and Gromit attempt to catch it with a giant, stuffed female rabbit attached to their van, which breaks off after they go through a tunnel. Wallace goes to retrieve it, but fails to return when the giant rabbit shows up, forcing Gromit to take action himself. After a wild pursuit towards the creature, Wallace suspects that Hutch may be the rabbit and has Gromit lock him in a high-security cage. Gromit then finds a bunch of giant muddy rabbit tracks leading up to Wallace's room. There, he finds a giant pile of half-eaten vegetables on Wallace's bed, revealing Wallace as the true culprit. Victor, who seeks to woo Tottington, corners Wallace in the forest, but Wallace transforms into a Were-Rabbit under the light of the full moon and flees. Now seeing the perfect chance to eliminate his rival, Victor obtains three "24-carrot" gold bullets from the town's vicar, Reverend Clement Hedges, to use against rabbit Wallace.

On the day of the vegetable competition, Gromit reveals to Wallace that he is indeed a Were-Rabbit, whereas the experiment has swapped his and Hutch's personalities; The latter is now carrying his human traits and is the only one who can fix the Mind-O-Matic to undo the curse. Tottington, who has developed feelings for Wallace, visits and tells him about Victor's plan while offering him a chance to remain friends. As the moon rises, Wallace begins to transform into a Were-Rabbit and hastily forces Tottington to leave, to which she is distraught and leaves in tears. Victor arrives and attempts to shoot Wallace with the golden bullets. Gromit creates a distraction using the female rabbit costume to allow Wallace to escape, and Victor gives chase to the competition. Gromit begins working with Hutch, and plans to sacrifice the giant marrow he has grown for the competition as bait to lure Wallace to safety.

Wallace creates chaos at the fair. Using up all his gold bullets, Victor takes the Golden Carrot trophy to use as ammunition. Wallace, having suddenly snapped out of his rabbit-like behavior, carries Tottington atop Tottington Hall, where she discovers that the Were-Rabbit is really Wallace. Victor gives chase, revealing that he only wants to impress Lady Tottington for her fortune. Victor's dog, Philip, engages Gromit in a dogfight in aeroplanes taken from a fairground attraction. After defeating Philip, Gromit then steers his plane into Victor's line of fire as he takes aim at Wallace, causing the bullet to hit the plane instead. The damaged plane falls and Wallace jumps to grab Gromit, sacrificing himself to break his fall into a cheese tent.

Victor gloats about his apparent victory, but Tottington knocks him out by smacking him in the head with her giant carrot and he falls into the tent as well. To protect Wallace from the angry townspeople, Gromit quickly disguises Victor as the Were-Rabbit with the female rabbit costume, causing Philip and the townspeople to chase him away instead. Wallace transforms back to his human self and appears dead-(causing a large herd of a rabbits to cry and mourn over him), but Gromit revives him with some Stinking Bishop cheese, undoing the curse of the Were-Rabbit. Tottington awards Gromit the dented Golden Carrot for his valor, and converts the grounds of Tottington Hall into a nature reserve for Hutch and the other rabbits.

Helena Bonham Carter at the film's North American premiere at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival[10]

• Peter Sallis as Wallace, a good-natured yet eccentric, absent-minded and accident-prone inventor with a great fondness for cheese, who runs Anti-Pesto with his dog and best friend, Gromit.
  • Sallis also provides the voice of Hutch, a kidnapped rabbit who gradually develops several of Wallace's mannerisms — his dialogue consists entirely of phrases and statements previously made by Wallace — after an attempted mind-alteration goes awry and who is at first suspected to be the Were-Rabbit. Sallis' voice was digitally accelerated to create that of Hutch's.
• Gromit is Wallace's silent, brave and highly intelligent dog who cares deeply for his master, and saves him whenever something goes wrong.
• Ralph Fiennes as Lord Victor Quartermaine, a cruel upper class bounder and a prideful hunter who is courting Lady Tottington. He wears a toupee and despises Wallace and Gromit.
  • Philip is Victor's vicious but cowardly and dimwitted hunting dog who resembles a Bull Terrier. He is too cowardly to face the Were-Rabbit so he instead targets Gromit.
• Helena Bonham Carter as Lady Campanula Tottington, a wealthy aristocratic spinster with a keen interest in vegetable horticulture and 'fluffy' animals. For 517 years, the Tottington family has hosted an annual vegetable competition on their estate on the same night. Lady Tottington asks Wallace to call her "Totty" (which is a British term for attractive women) and develops a romantic interest in him. Her forename, Campanula, is the scientific name of a bellflower, and her surname is taken from the Lancashire village of Tottington.
• Peter Kay as Police Constable Albert Mackintosh, the local village policeman who judges the Giant Vegetable Contest, though he would prefer it if the "trouble-making" competition didn't happen.
• Nicholas Smith as Reverend Clement Hedges, the superstitious town vicar and the first resident to witness the Were-Rabbit.
• Dicken Ashworth and Liz Smith as Mr. and Mrs. Mulch, neighbours of Wallace and Gromit who raise prize-winning pumpkins.
• Edward Kelsey as Mr. Growbag, an elderly resident of Wallace and Gromit's neighbourhood and a founding member of the town's veg grower's council.
• Mark Gatiss as Ms. Blight, a resident of Wallace and Gromit's neighbourhood.
• Geraldine McEwan as Miss Thripp, an Anti-Pesto customer. McEwan reprises her role in A Matter of Loaf and Death.

Director Nick Park at the film's premiere

In March 2000, it was officially announced that Wallace and Gromit were to star in their own feature film.[11] It would have been Aardman's next film after The Tortoise and the Hare, which was subsequently abandoned by the studio in July 2001, owing to script issues.[12][13]

The directors, Nick Park and Steve Box, have often referred to the film as the world's "first vegetarian horror film".[14][15] Peter Sallis (the voice of Wallace) is joined in the film by Ralph Fiennes (as Lord Victor Quartermaine), Helena Bonham Carter (as Lady Campanula Tottington), Peter Kay (as PC Mackintosh), Nicholas Smith (as Rev. Clement Hedges), and Liz Smith (as Mrs. Mulch). As established in the preceding short films, Gromit is a silent character, communicating purely via body language.

The film was originally going to be called Wallace & Gromit: The Great Vegetable Plot, but the title was changed, as the market research disliked it.[16] The first reported release date for The Great Vegetable Plot was November 2004.[17] Production officially began in September 2003, and the film was then set for release on 30 September 2005. In July 2003, Entertainment Weekly referred the film as Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Park told an interviewer that after separate test screenings with British and American audiences, along with their children, the film was altered to "tone down some of the British accents and make them speak more clearly so the American audiences could understand it all better."[18] Park was often sent notes from DreamWorks, which stressed him. He recalled one note that Wallace's car should be trendier, which he disagreed with because he felt making things look old-fashioned made it look more ironic.[19]

The vehicle Wallace drives in the film is an Austin A35 van. In collaboration with Aardman in the spring of 2005, a road going replica of the model was created by brothers Mark and David Armé, founders of the International Austin A30/A35 Register, for promotional purposes. In a 500-man-hour customisation, an original 1964 van received a full body restoration, before being dented and distressed to perfectly replicate the model van used in the film. The official colour of the van is Preston Green, named in honour of Nick Park's home town. The name was chosen by the art director and Mark Armé.

The film had its worldwide premiere on September 4, 2005, in Sydney, Australia.[4] It was theatrically released in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and the United States on October 14, 2005. The DVD edition of the film was released on February 7, 2006 (United States) and February 20, 2006 (United Kingdom).

All music is composed by Julian Nott and produced by Hans Zimmer.

After the box-office failure of Flushed Away resulted in a major write down for DreamWorks, it was reported on 3 October 2006[52] and confirmed on 30 January 2007[53] that DreamWorks had terminated their partnership with Aardman. In revealing the losses related to Flushed Away, DreamWorks also revealed they had taken a $29 million write down over Wallace & Gromit as well, and the film under performed expectations despite grossing $192 million against a budget of only $30 million.[54]

Following the split, Aardman retained complete ownership of the film, while DreamWorks Animation retained worldwide distribution rights in perpetuity, excluding some United Kingdom television rights and ancillary markets.[7] Soon after the end of the agreement, Aardman announced that they would proceed with another Wallace & Gromit project, later revealed to be a return to their earlier short films with A Matter of Loaf and Death for BBC One.

During production of the short, Park remarked publicly on difficulties with working with DreamWorks during the production of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, such as the constant production notes and demands to alter the material to appeal more to American children.[19][55] This discouraged him from producing another feature film for years, with Lord noting that Park preferred the “half hour format”.[56] However, in January 2022, a new Wallace & Gromit feature film was announced, which is due to release in 2024 on Netflix worldwide, except for the UK, where it will premiere first on the BBC before also coming to Netflix at a later date.[9]

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