Eddie Redmayne Goes Prehistoric In New Early Man Trailer

You can take the boy out of the Stone Age, but it's much harder to take the Stone Age out of the boy.

Lionsgate released a new teaser trailer for Early Man, the upcoming stop-motion flick from Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park, and it offers a new look at the tribe of lovable cavemen at its core.

Eddie Redmayne (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) voices Dug, a scrawny member of a tribe of rabbit hunters. Although he wants his people to start thinking bigger, he's not quite ready for the march of progress that comes when an evil ruler voiced by Tom Hiddleston (Thor: Ragnarok) invades their territory with Bronze Age technology. In an effort to retain his land, Dug arranges a soccer match to determine the fate of his tribe. Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) also voices a character.

Park, who also created Chicken Run and Shaun of the Sheep, told Entertainment Weekly that he's long wanted to do something set in the Stone Age. "I've always been attracted to the idea of cavemen, and I think the medium of clay seems to suit the subject," he said. "And then I started thinking about the idea of classic cavemen with their clubs and how that sort of lends itself to sport."

Early Man has been in the works for quite a while now. "I saw a sketch for this the other day that was dated 2011," Park said. "We spent a long time talking about it and writing. We've been filming for 18 months, as most animated movies take to make. And then writing and storyboarding takes ages. You're trying to edit the movie before you've made it, because we don't have that freedom you have in live action where you can shoot loads of stuff and edit after. We can't afford to not use shots."

As for the cast, Park said he admired Redmayne's ability to "sound full of enthusiasm but at the same time vulnerable," and he decided to work with Hiddleston after hearing him do impressions on an episode of The Graham Norton Show. "I already liked his roles, but I saw him mimicking other celebrities on the show and thought he would be a good guy to try out with a French accent."

Early Man hits theaters Feb. 16.