Remember Chicken Run? Sure ya do! Aardman Animation’s 2000 claymation feature is a charming, funny riff on prison break classics like The Great Escape and Bridge on the River Kwai, only with chickens. If that still doesn’t ring a bell, check out the trailer for the imminent sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, which hits New Zealand cinemas on December 15.
Set in post-World War II Yorkshire, Chicken Run saw feisty hen Ginger (Julia Sawalha) plot a mass escape from their cozy farm, having learned that they’re all destined for the chop. She was aided and abetted by the cocky American rooster Rocky Rhodes (Mel Gibson, back when we could stand him), an escapee from a circus who crash-landed in the farm and styles himself as a Virgil Hilts-style rabble rouser. It was Aardman Animation’s first feature after a long string of acclaimed shorts, such as the Wallace and Gromit flicks.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget picks up events years later, with the chickens having successfully escaped to an idyllic island, far from any roasting pans. There’s been some recasting this time out: Thandiwe Newtown now voices Ginger, Sawalha having rather controversially having been deemed too old to reprise her role, while Rocky Rhodes is now voiced by Shazam star Zachary Levi, as that part apparently demands a problematic religious guy. But, glass half full, we also get Game of Thrones and The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey as the pair’s infant daughter, Molly.
It’s her arrival that sets the chickens off on a new adventure, coupled with a new (and as yet unspecified) threat to the flock’s island commune. Aardman are one of the finest animation houses on the planet, and we’re always keen to see what they’re serving up, so we’ll be checking this one out when it hatches.
