The Disney Channel has acquired the rights to Timmy, the award-winning stop-motion animated series from U.K.-based Aardman Animations (Wallace & Gromit.)Timmy, the adorable 3-year-old lamb, will premiere on Disney in 2009 and will be joined by his farmyard friends as he learns about himself and others. — J.R. Whalen
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Victory! Entourage's Kevin Dillon has been tapped to play the title character in the 300-spoofing National Lampoon's 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas.... Also per Variety, Natalie Portman joins Brothers' Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in a love-triangle drama based on a 2004 Danish film.... Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) will direct Twilight, an adaptation of the best-selling young-adult fantasy series.... Both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are in talks to just suck it up and reunite for the fourth installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise.... Also per the Reporter, Wallace and Gromit will appear in a new half-hour short set at a bakery and titled Trouble at the Mill.... Music-video vet Sam Bayer will helm a remake of the 1987 vampire flick Near Dark.
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What does it take to make a box-office champion? Five painstaking years, a delicate touch and a whole lot of clay. Or, at least, such was the case with Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the clay-animated feature that dominated theaters this past weekend with its wickedly clever tale of the titular twosome's endeavor to save Lady Tottington's Giant Vegetable Competition from the hungry hooks of an equally oversize bunny. Considering the effort that went into stretching a Wallace and Gromit adventure from the usual 30 minutes (as in their three short film outings) into nearly thrice that, you'd better believe that the story is set in stone before the first Plasticine pumpkin is formed.
"The story is the most important thing," Wallace and Gromit's creator, Nick Park, tells TVGuide.com. Park, who codirected Were-Rabbit
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