Early Man is a 2018 stop motion animated sports comedy film directed by Nick Park, and written by Park, Mark Burton and James Higginson. It was produced by Aardman Animations, and stars the voices of Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, and Timothy Spall. The film follows a tribe of primitive Stone Age valley dwellers who have to defend their land from bronze-equipped invaders in a football match.

Early Man premiered on 20 January 2018 at the BFI Southbank cinema, and was released theatrically on 26 January 2018. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for the visuals and humor, although it was considered inferior to previous Aardman works. The film was also less successful financially compared to previous Aardman offerings, grossing just $54 million against a budget of $50 million. The film was also the last Aardman film to be released theatrically in the United States, until Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom on September 18, 2026, as Netflix acquired streaming rights to further Aardman films in late 2019.

In 2 million BC, during the Neo-Pleistocene era, an asteroid collides with Earth "near Manchester", causing the extinction of the planet's dinosaurs, but sparing a tribe of cavemen living near the impact site. Finding a roughly spherical chunk of the asteroid, the cavemen begin to kick it around because it is too hot to hold and accidentally invent the game of football. "Several eras" later during the Stone Age, the impact site has become a lush valley, inhabited by a tribe of cavemen, including Dug and his pet wild boar Hognob. One day, Dug suggests to Chief Bobnar that they should try hunting mammoths instead of rabbits as they always do, but Bobnar brushes him off, insisting the uncoordinated tribe would be unable to catch mammoths. An army led by Lord Nooth, a Bronze Age governor, drives the tribe out of the valley and into the surrounding volcanic badlands. Dug tries to attack them, but falls into a cart and is unknowingly taken to the Bronze Age city. There, he is mistaken for a footballer. To escape, he challenges Nooth's elite local team to a match with the valley at stake and promises that the tribe will work in Nooth's mines forever if they lose. Nooth accepts, knowing that he can profit from the match. Dug discovers that although his ancestors played football, the other members of his tribe are too dim to understand it. They get chased by a giant duck that destroys their only ball.

Later that night, Dug and Hognob sneak into the Bronze Age city to steal more balls, but are found out by a female vendor named Goona, who goes to the empty stadium to practise in secret. Resentful over the team's exclusion of women, she helps them steal some spherical balls and agrees to coach the cavemen. Goona points out that the footballers on Nooth's team are talented but too egotistical to work together effectively. The cavemen improve in skill and teamwork under her coaching. Queen Oofeefa sends a message bird informing Nooth of the consequences should the cave team win. To demoralise Dug, Nooth has him brought to the mines and shows him cave paintings made by his tribe's ancestors who, although they had invented the game and taught other tribes to play it, they never won a single match to other tribes and eventually gave up football.

On the day of the match with Oofeefa in attendance, Dug announces his forfeiture as part of the deal which spares the rest of the tribe and agrees to take their place in the mines alone. However, his reinvigorated teammates arrive on the now tamed giant duck to play the match. The cavemen score an early goal, but the local team soon takes a 3-1 lead. When the cavemen manage to tie the match Nooth incapacitates the referee and takes his place, making biased calls in favour of the local team that leads to Bobnar (who was serving as the goalkeeper) being knocked out. Hognob takes his place before blocking a penalty kick, and Dug scores using a bicycle kick to win the match for the cavemen, and they win their valley back with the respect of Oofeefa, the local team, and the crowd. Nooth tries to escape and steal the crowd's admission money, but is arrested for his crimes while everyone gets their money back. Sometime later, Goona and Nooth's elite team join Dug's tribe for a hunt, but they are frightened off by the rabbit pretending to be a woolly mammoth.

In addition to a rabbit that Dug's tribe constantly hunts every day, a Ceratosaurus and a Triceratops, similar to the ones animated by Ray Harryhausen from One Million Years B.C., are seen fighting each other at the opening of the film prior to the asteroid striking Earth. In the end credits, they go by the name Ray (Ceratosaurus) and Harry (Triceratops).

In June 2007, two films were announced by Aardman, one of them being appropriately joked as an "untitled Nick Park film, which is not another Wallace & Gromit feature film." In May 2015, it was announced that the title of the film would be Early Man, and it would be financed by the British Film Institute for $50 million.^{[citation needed]}

As with previous stop motion films created by Aardman, the characters in Early Man were developed over time with the voice actors to determine the way the characters look, move, and speak. The results were turned over to the film's 35 animators at the studio to work on individualising the characters. A crowd of people took part in an audio recording at the Memorial Stadium, home to Bristol Rovers.