Jake Hodges

Published Sep 9, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 3000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix’s Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio.

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Few animation studios are as famous as Aardman Animations. Based in Bristol, UK, the pioneers of stop-motion have delivered some of the finest examples of the animation style both the big and small screens have ever seen. From the beloved Flushed Away to the highest-grossing stop-motion animated movie of all time, Chicken Run, Aardman continues to break boundaries and fight against a rising tide of AI by proving that care in one’s craft creates a consistent canvas for success.

The studio’s most famous creation is, of course, Wallace and Gromit, who have remained the faces of British animation since breaking out with the 1989 Oscar-nominated short, A Grand Day Out. In 2005, creator **Nick Park **delivered one of the franchise’s most ambitious projects to date with The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a horror-inspired, feature-length *Wallace and Gromit *tale that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. 21 years later, Aardman is finally returning to spooky season by taking another of its beloved characters into the feature-length Halloween realm.

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is the latest stop-motion Aardman feature, based on the fan-favorite 2007 spin-off of A Close Shave. Co-directed by** Steve Cox and Matthew Walker** and written by** Mark Burton** and Giles Pilbrow, *The Beast of Mossy Bottom *continues Aardman’s “50-year legacy of hand-crafted claymation with instantly lovable characters and hysterical down-home charm,” and will be released in U.S. theaters on September 18, 2026. Ahead of the film’s debut, Collider has teamed up with Shaun and the gang to bring you the exclusive image below as part of our Exclusive Fall Preview Event.

Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.

Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.

Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.

Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.

Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.

Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.

We’ve been frightened by the Were-Rabbit and fled in fear of Feathers McGraw, but the stop-motion world just got a whole lot spookier courtesy of the titular Beast of Mossy Bottom. The film “sees the residents of Mossy Bottom Farm looking forward to Halloween – until the clumsy Farmer trashes the Flock’s beloved pumpkin patch,” a synopsis reveals. “When Shaun turns MAD SCIENTIST to fix the problem, things rapidly spiral out of control… With The Farmer missing and a wild beast roaming the woods of Mossingham, all the ingredients are in place for a monstrously fun family adventure.”

**Justin Fletcher **returns as the bleating voice of Shaun and Timmy, with John Sparkes, Kate Harbour, Paul Whitehouse, Roman Kemp, and even ***Love Island ***winner **Dani Dyer **rounding out the cast. The film contains original music by Natalie Holt, with executive producer credits going to Andrew Orr, Sarah Cox, Peter Lord, Nick Park, Carla Shelley, and Julia Stuart.

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom will release theatrically on September 18. Make sure to stay tuned for more from Collider’s exclusive Fall Preview Event.

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Steve Cox, Matthew Walker

The Farmer / Bitzer (voice)