Fire destroys 'Wallace and Gromit' warehouse

BRISTOL, England -- The company behind the new "Wallace and Gromit" film said Monday its "entire history" has been destroyed in a fire at a warehouse containing props and sets.

The roof and three interior walls of the Aardman Animations building in Bristol, west England collapsed after the blaze tore through the Victorian building, fire officials said.

The fire broke out at about 5:30 a.m. (0430 GMT), with flames reaching 100 feet into the air. The cause of the blaze was being investigated.

A spokesman for Aardman said the building housed props and sets from the company's history, including its first three "Wallace and Gromit" films.

No one was in the building when the fire broke out. Aardman said the sets and props from its latest film, "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," were not caught in the blaze.

Why is any of this ironic?

"Curse of the Were-Rabbit," Wallace and Gromit's first full-length feature, was released in the United States on Friday and topped the U.S. box office over the weekend.

"Today was supposed to be a day of celebration, with the news that 'Wallace and Gromit' had gone in at No. 1 at the U.S. box office, but instead our whole history has been wiped out," Aardman spokesman Arthur Sheriff said. "It's turned out to be a terrible day."

Nick Park, who created W&G, says that compared to the Pakistani earthquake, it "isn't a big deal" at all. That's good perspective, but it's still a bummer, especially (for me) that it destroyed the sets from Chicken Run, the movie with perhaps the best soundtrack of the past ten years.

But that's just me. Maybe it's just bad timing, not irony, but it still sucks.