Flushed Away is a 2006 animated adventure comedy film directed by Sam Fell and David Bowers, produced by Cecil Kramer, David Sproxton, and Peter Lord, and written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and Will Davies. It was the third and final DreamWorks Animation film co-produced with Aardman Features following Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and was the first Aardman project made primarily in CGI animation instead of using their usual stop-motion – this was because using water on plasticine models could damage them, and rendering the effect in another way was complex. The film stars the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Shane Richie, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis and Jean Reno. In the film, a pampered fancy rat named Roddy St. James (Jackman) is flushed down the toilet in his Kensington apartment by a sewer rat named Sid (Richie), and befriends a scavenger named Rita Malone (Winslet) in order to get back home while evading a sinister toad (McKellen) and his hench-rats (Nighy and Serkis).
The idea of rats falling in love in the sewers was created by animator Fell during the production of Chicken Run. In 2001, Fell developed the concept into a story before pitching it to DreamWorks. The project was first announced in July 2002, followed by comic writing duo Clement and La Frenais being contracted to write the script, which had the working title Ratropolis. In 2003, Bowers joined Fell as co-director.
The film's world premiere was held at the Toho Cinemas Theatre in Roppongi Hills during the Tokyo International Film Festival on 22 October 2006, followed by a wide release in United States by Paramount Pictures on 3 November 2006, and in the United Kingdom by UIP on 1 December. Despite receiving positive reviews from critics, Flushed Away underperformed at the box office, grossing over $178 million worldwide against its $149 million production budget and prompting Aardman to end its partnership deal with DreamWorks with the estimated loss of $109 million after write-down. The film received nominations for the BAFTA Award and Critics' Choice Award for Best Animated Feature. It received a further eight nominations at the 34th Annie Awards, winning a leading five, including Writing in a Feature Production and, for McKellen, Voice Acting in a Feature Production.