''Wat’s Pig'' is a 1996 British stop motion animated short film created by Aardman Animations and written and directed by

Peter Lord Peter Lord CBE (born 1953) is an English animator, director, producer and co-founder of the Academy Award-winning Aardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay-animated films and shorts, particularly those featuring pla ...

. It is a tale of two princes who are split as babies only to reunite as adults during a war. It is told almost entirely non-verbally.

Plot

In a Medieval castle, a marauder tries to kidnap the twin infant sons of the lord. He makes off with only one, whom he drops about a mile away. A pig rescues this baby, so one brother grows up high on the hog, the other down with the swine. One being lazy, another industrious. Years later, when a neighboring prince declares war, the brother in the castle is too soft to fight. The twins are united just before the final battle.

Production

''Wat's Pig'' was Aardman's sixth

Oscar Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People * Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms. * Oscar (Irish mythology), ...

nomination, and Lord's second Oscar nomination as a director. Peter Lord said: "I don't expect, ''Wat's Pig'' to make its money back, or ''Stage Fright'' to make its money back, but we have that luxury. We can do that here, because we get money from the commercials and the merchandising malarkey." He explained some of the production process:

Critical reception

DVD Review describes ''Wat's Pig'' as "Scripted, widescreen, more ordinary, and better (than ''War Story'')".

Awards and nominations

, - , 1997 , Peter Lord , Academy Award for Best Short Film, Animated , , -

Preservation

''Wat's Pig'' was preserved by the

Academy Film Archive The Academy Film Archive is part of the Academy Foundation, established in 1944 with the purpose of organizing and overseeing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ educational and cultural activities, including the preservation of m ...

in 2013.

References

External links

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Wat's Pig (1996)
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IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

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Wat's Pig
' on

MUBI Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...

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Wat's Pig
' on

BCDB The Big Cartoon DataBase (or BCDB for short) is an online database of information about animated cartoons, animated feature films, animated television shows, and cartoon shorts. The BCDB project began in 1997 as a list of Disney animated featur ...

1996 films 1996 animated films Animated films without speech 1990s animated short films British short films Films directed by Peter Lord Stop-motion animated short films Aardman Animations short films 1990s English-language films 1990s British films {{short-animation-film-stub