Early Man

Early Man is a 2018 animated sports comedy film directed by Nick Park, the Aardman creator of BBC's Wallace & Gromit and DreamWorks Animation's Chicken Run. written by Mark Burton and James Higginson, and starring the voices of Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, and Timothy Spall. The film follows a tribe of primitive Stone Age valley dwellers who have to defend their land from bronze-equipped invaders in a football match. The film premiered on 20 January 2018 at the BFI Southbank cinema. Released theatrically on 26 January 2018 (in the UK), the film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for the visuals and humor, although it was considered inferior to previous Aardman works. However, it was a box-office bomb, grossing just $54 million against a budget of $50 million, making it the lowest-grossing Aardman film since Flushed Away. It was also the last Aardman film to be released theatrically in the United States to date, as Netflix acquired streaming rights to further Aardman films in late 2019.