Production notes

As part of their contract with Dreamworks Animation, Aardman announced plans for a caveman film titled Crood Awakening in 2005. Though their partnership would end not long after this announcement, Dreamworks retained rights to Aardman's original story and developed it into the 2013 film The Croods. 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. 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. The studio began principal photography on the film in May 2016 and wrapped on 5 October 2017.

Early Man grossed only $8.2 million in North America and $46.3 million in other territories (including $15.8 million in the United Kingdom) for a worldwide gross of $54.6 million, against its budget of $50 million.

In the United States and Canada, Early Man was released alongside Black Panther and was projected to gross $5–$7 million on its opening weekend at 2,494 areas. However, it made just $849K on its opening day, far below projections. It opened to just $3.1 million at the box office, and $4.2 million on its President's Day weekend, averaging just $1,279 per cinema. This placed it seventh, and with the fourth-worst opening for an animated movie playing in over 2,000 theatres at the time, below Delgo, All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 and Teacher's Pet. The poor opening was attributed to the simultaneous release of the highly anticipated Black Panther. Early Man dropped by 44.4% on its opening weekend, grossing $1.7 million and ranking tenth, while averaging $711 per theatre. On its third weekend, it dropped by 72.6% and dropped from 2,494 cinemas to just 897 cinemas. It made $486K on its third weekend, averaging just $542 per cinema.

The film opened in the United Kingdom on 26 January 2018, and opened at fourth with $2.8 million, it stayed at fourth for another two weeks until moving down to sixth on its fourth week, making $2.1 million on its second weekend (dropping by 25.8%), and $1.5 million on its third week (dropping by 26.3%). The top five international markets for the movie were the United Kingdom ($15.7 million), France ($6.7 million), Spain ($3.3 million), Germany ($1.7 million) and Italy ($1.6 million).

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 80% based on 173 reviews, and an average rating of 6.6/10, making it the lowest-rated film Nick Park has made. The website's critical consensus reads, "Early Man isn't quite as evolved as Aardman's best work, but still retains the unique visuals and sweet humor that have made the studio a favorite among animation enthusiasts." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale. Some critics claimed the film is an allegory for Brexit.