Sony Pictures, the Japanese-owned Hollywood studio, is preparing a tie-up with Aardman Animations, the maker of Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run, The Times has learnt.

The Oscar-winning Bristol-based production company famed for its claymation characters is understood to have agreed a deal with Sony less than two months after its five-film deal with Dreamworks Animation SKG broke down.

The agreement, brokered by Michael Lynton, head of Sony Pictures, will give Aardman a chance to regain a foothold in the US and could boost Sony’s share of the children’s film market, which is dominated by Pixar, maker of The Incredibles, and Dreamworks, producer of Shrek.

The move could also help Sony — better known for action Hollywood blockbusters such as Casino Royale and The Da Vinci Code — to boost its international presence as film-makers are increasingly trying to woo film producers and audiences outside the US.

Aardman signed a £150 million, five-film, exclusive deal with Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks studio seven years ago, but the deal fell through at the end of January after the most recent collaboration, Flushed Away, flopped in the US. The film, about rats in London’s sewers, took about $65 million at the US box office, less than half of the film’s $143 million budget. Critics accused the film, Aardman’s first entirely computer-generated feature, of being “too British” to succeed with American audiences. Others suggested that the deal collapsed because Aardman refused to buckle under pressure from Dreamworks to abandon their traditional Plasticine models for computer-generated animation, although both companies said that the eventual decision to part ways was mutual.

Aardman and Dreamworks had previously worked on Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit, together.

Aardman refused to comment on the Sony deal, but is thought to be already working on a new feature film. The group has also been promoting its Wallace & Gromit TV spin-off series, Shaun the Sheep.

Sony, is expected to confirm details of the deal on Monday.

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