Arthur Christmas is a 2011 animated Christmas comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation in association with Aardman Animations, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film is Aardman's second mostly computer-animated feature film after 2006's Flushed Away. It was directed by Sarah Smith, co-directed by Barry Cook, and written by Smith and Peter Baynham. Featuring the voices of James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, and Ashley Jensen, the film centres on Arthur Claus, the clumsy but well-meaning son of Santa Claus, who discovers that his father's high-tech ship has failed to deliver one girl's present. Accompanied only by his free-spirited and reckless grandfather, an enthusiastic Christmas elf obsessed with wrapping gifts, and a team of reindeer, he embarks on a mission to deliver the girl's present personally in the early morning hours of Christmas Day before sunrise.

Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.