Stop-motion animation studio Aardman, best known for the Wallace and Gromit series and movies like The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, has announced a collaboration with Pokemon that's set to debut in a couple of years.
In an announcement on its website, Aardman says its collaboration with The Pokemon Company will consist of "a special project" that'll arrive in 2027, and that the project will involve Aardman "bringing its unique style of storytelling to the Pokemon universe in brand-new adventures".
Aardman managing director Sean Clarke says that the collab will bring together Pokemon and Aardman's "love of craft, character and comedic storytelling", so it sounds like Aardman will be given at least a degree of creative control over the project, although The Pokemon Company isn't likely to let the studio do whatever it wants.
Pokemon marketing and media VP Taito Okiura, meanwhile, says that the teamup between Aardman and Pokemon is "a dream partnership", describing Aardman as "masters of their craft" and teasing that "global Pokemon fans are in for a treat".
This won't be Pokemon's first dalliance with stop-motion animation. Back in February 2023, The Pokemon Company announced Pokemon Concierge, a stop-motion series that was then in production for Netflix. It aired in December last year, attracting strongly positive reviews.
Of course, we don't yet know whether the Aardman collaboration will be another series or a movie, but the announcement refers to "brand-new adventures", so we'll seemingly be getting more than one of whatever the two companies are cooking up.
As for what's next for Pokemon, the next game in the series will be Pokemon Legends: Z-A, which is supposedly currently in development for Switch and which is intended to land next year, although we haven't heard much about the game since its announcement back in February.
Otherwise, the next major mainline installments in the Pokemon series will probably be appearing on the long-awaited Switch 2, so much like the Aardman collab, we'll probably be waiting a while for more news on that one. Stay tuned for more.
