Early Man (film)

Early Man
British theatrical release poster
Directed by	Nick Park
Screenplay by	Mark Burton James Higginson
Story by	Mark Burton Nick Park
Produced by	Peter Lord David Sproxton Nick Park Carla Shelley Richard Beek
Starring	Eddie Redmayne Tom Hiddleston Maisie Williams Timothy Spall
Cinematography	Dave Alex Riddett
Edited by	Sim Evan-Jones
Music by	Harry Gregson-Williams Tom Howe
Production companies	StudioCanal Aardman Animations BFI
Distributed by	StudioCanal
Release dates	20 January 2018 (2018-01-20) (BFI Southbank) 26 January 2018 (2018-01-26) (United Kingdom)
Running time	88 minutes[1]
Countries	United Kingdom France
Language	English
Budget	$50 million[2]
Box office	$54.6 million[3]

Early Man is a 2018 animated sports comedy film directed by Nick Park, the creator of Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, and Shaun the Sheep, 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.^[4] 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.