The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, known internationally as The Pirates! Band of Misfits, is an upcoming 3-D

3-D film

A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...

 stop-motion animated film produced by Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations, Ltd., also known as Aardman Studios, or simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom. The studio is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit...

 and Sony Pictures Animation

Sony Pictures Animation

Sony Pictures Animation is an American computer-animated film production company owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, founded in May 2002. It is working closely with Sony Pictures Imageworks, which takes care of the digital production...

 and set for release on March 28, 2012, in UK, and on March 30, 2012, in US. It is being directed by Peter Lord

Peter Lord

Peter Lord CBE is a British film producer, director and co-founder of the Academy award-winning Aardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay animated films and shorts, particularly those featuring plasticine duo Wallace & Gromit.-Biography:In cooperation with David...

 and co-directed by Jeff Newitt. The film is based on the first two books from Gideon Defoe

Gideon Defoe

Gideon Defoe is a British writer and author of The Pirates!, a series of comedy books following a group of pirates on their adventures.His publisher claims that Gideon started writing stories about pirates to convince a young lady to leave her boyfriend for him .-Bibliography:*The Pirates!...

's The Pirates!

The Pirates!

The Pirates! is a series of four comedy books following a group of pirates on their adventures. It is written by British author Gideon Defoe and was published starting in 2004 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson...

series, The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists is the first book in The Pirates! series by Gideon Defoe dealing with a hapless crew of pirates. It was published in 2004 by Orion Books .-Plot:...

and The Pirates! in an Adventure with Whaling

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Whaling

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Whaling is the second book in The Pirates! series by Gideon Defoe, published in 2005 by The Orion Publishing Group....

. The film will feature the voices of Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant

Hugh John Mungo Grant is an English actor and film producer. He has received a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and an Honorary César. His films have earned more than $2.4 billion from 25 theatrical releases worldwide. Grant achieved international stardom after appearing in Richard Curtis's...

, Salma Hayek

Salma Hayek

Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez de Pinault is a Mexican film actress, director and producer. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role as Frida Kahlo in the film Frida.-Early life:...

, Jeremy Piven

Jeremy Piven

Jeremy Samuel Piven is an American film producer and actor best known for his role as Ari Gold in the television series Entourage for which he has won three Emmy Awards as well as several other nominations for Best Supporting Actor....

, Imelda Staunton

Imelda Staunton

Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton, OBE is an English actress. She is perhaps best known for her performances in the British comedy television series Up the Garden Path, the Harry Potter film series and Vera Drake...

 and David Tennant

David Tennant

David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...

.

Plot

The Pirate Captain and his crew of swashbuckling pirates attempt to beat his rivals Black Bellamy and Cutlass Liz in the Pirate of the Year Award. On their quest they battle Queen Victoria and meet a young Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

.

Cast

• Hugh Grant
  Hugh Grant
  Hugh John Mungo Grant is an English actor and film producer. He has received a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and an Honorary César. His films have earned more than $2.4 billion from 25 theatrical releases worldwide. Grant achieved international stardom after appearing in Richard Curtis's...
  
   as The Pirate Captain,
• Salma Hayek
  Salma Hayek
  Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez de Pinault is a Mexican film actress, director and producer. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role as Frida Kahlo in the film Frida.-Early life:...
  
   as Cutlass Liz
• Jeremy Piven
  Jeremy Piven
  Jeremy Samuel Piven is an American film producer and actor best known for his role as Ari Gold in the television series Entourage for which he has won three Emmy Awards as well as several other nominations for Best Supporting Actor....
  
   as Black Bellamy
• Imelda Staunton
  Imelda Staunton
  Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton, OBE is an English actress. She is perhaps best known for her performances in the British comedy television series Up the Garden Path, the Harry Potter film series and Vera Drake...
  
   as Queen Victoria
• David Tennant
  David Tennant
  David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...
  
   as Charles Darwin
• Martin Freeman
  Martin Freeman
  Martin John C. Freeman is an English actor. He is known for his roles as John in Love Actually, Tim Canterbury in the BBC's Golden Globe-winning comedy The Office, Arthur Dent in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. John Watson in Sherlock and Mr. Madden...
  
   as The Pirate with a Scarf
• Lenny Henry
  Lenny Henry
  Lenworth George "Lenny" Henry, is a British actor, writer, comedian and occasional television presenter.- Early life :...
  
   as Peg-Leg Hastings
• Brendan Gleeson
  Brendan Gleeson
  Brendan Gleeson is an Irish actor. His best-known films include Braveheart, Gangs of New York, In Bruges, 28 Days Later, the Harry Potter films, The Guard and the role of Michael Collins in The Treaty...
  
   as The Pirate with Gout
• Ashley Jensen
  Ashley Jensen
  Ashley Jensen is a Scottish actress who is best known for her roles in the television series Extras for which she was nominated for an Emmy, and ABC's Ugly Betty...
  
   as The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate
• Brian Blessed
  Brian Blessed
  Brian Blessed is an English actor, known for his sonorous voice and "hearty, king-sized portrayals".-Early life:The son of William Blessed, a socialist miner, and Hilda Wall, Blessed was born in the town of Goldthorpe, West Riding of Yorkshire, England...
  
   as The Pirate King
• Russell Tovey
  Russell Tovey
  Russell George Tovey is an English actor with numerous television, film and stage credits. Tovey is best known for playing the role of werewolf George Sands in the BBC's supernatural drama Being Human which started in 2008...
  
   as The Albino Pirate

Production

Despite being a stop-motion film, Aardman is extensively using computer graphics to complement and enrich the film with visual elements like sea and scenery, both very challenging tasks to accomplish in a stop-motion. Peter Lord commented, "With Pirates!, I must say that the new technology has made Pirates! really liberating to make, easy to make because the fact that you can shoot a lot of green screen stuff, the fact that you can easily extend the sets with CG, the fact that you can put the sea in there and a beautiful wooden boat that, frankly, would never sail in a million years, you can take that and put it into a beautiful CG scene and believe it."

Marketing

On July 14, 2011, the first trailers were released; the international version on iTunes Movie Trailers, and the UK version on guardian.co.uk

Guardian.co.uk

guardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...

.

Sequel

On August 14, 2011, Peter Lord, the director of The Pirates! tweeted that they are working on the sequel idea.