Aardman has put Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom in its animation pipeline for a 2026 launch, marking the third feature film for this long-running stop-motion franchise.

As the new pic’s exclusive UK distributor, Sky is planning to stage a broad release next year in theaters and on its Sky Cinema film subscription service. Meanwhile, StudioCanal will manage rights in all other territories, kicking off its sales effort at the Cannes Film Festival later this month (May 13 to 24).

The Beast of Mossy Bottom explores what happens when Shaun tries to fix a destroyed pumpkin patch in time for Halloween—his mad scientist antics lead to several complications, like the Farmer going missing and a mysterious creature emerging from the woods.

Mark Burton (Paddington in Peru) and Giles Pilbrow (Horrible Histories) are writing a screenplay for directors Steve Cox (Pingu) and Matthew Walker (Lloyd of the Flies). 

Aardman is coming off the strong performance of its most recent feature Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024), which generated 21.6 million views in 28 days on the BBC and also debuted on Netflix’s global top-10 films list with 4.6 million views.

As a franchise, Shaun the Sheep has two Academy Award nominations to its credit. First film Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) earned an impressive US$106 million in ticket sales, followed by 2019’s A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019), which grossed US$47.8 million in select global territories and launched exclusively on Netflix in the US.