The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (released in North America, Australia and New Zealand as The Pirates! Band of Misfits) is a 2012 British-American 3D stop-motion animated swashbuckler comedy film produced by Aardman Animations and Sony Pictures Animation as their second and final collaborative project. It was directed by Peter Lord. The film was distributed by Columbia Pictures and was released on 28 March 2012 in the United Kingdom, and on 27 April 2012 in the United States. "The Pirates!" features the voices of Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant,
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! may not quite scale Aardman's customary delirious heights, but "The Pirates!" still represents some of the smartest, most skillfully animated fare that modern cinema has to offer." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 73 based on 31 reviews. By August 2011, Aardman had been already working on a sequel idea, and by June 2012, a story had been prepared, awaiting Sony to back the project. Eventually, Sony decided not to support the project due to insufficient international earnings. According to Lord, "it got close, but