Aardman teams up with Netflix for long-awaited Chicken Run sequel

Twenty years on to the day from the US release of Aardman’s first feature, details have been unveiled of the very belated sequel – including its freshly hatched plot.

Chicken Run 2 goes into full production in 2021 and also marks the studio’s first collaboration with streaming giant Netflix.

Still the Oscar-winning Bristol animation studio’s biggest commercial hit, as well as the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time, Chicken Run began with a classic one-line pitch: The Great Escape with chickens.

Set on a grim ‘50s chicken farm run by dim Mr. Tweedy and his sinister, hen-hating wife, it tells the story of an audacious escape attempt masterminded by determined Ginger (Julia Sawalha), who foresees the likely consequences of Mrs Tweedy’s shiny new chicken pie machine.

The arrival of Rocky the strutting Rhode Island Red rooster (Mel Gibson) gives the flock new hope, but Rocky has a secret that could thwart the escape plan.

The official synopsis for the sequel suggests a plot reversal is in the offing: “Having pulled off a death-defying escape from Tweedy’s farm, Ginger has finally found her dream – a peaceful island sanctuary for the whole flock, far from the dangers of the human world.

“When she and Rocky hatch a little girl called Molly, Ginger’s happy ending seems complete. But back on the mainland the whole of chicken-kind faces a new and terrible threat. For Ginger and her team, even if it means putting their own hard-won freedom at risk – this time, they’re breaking in!”

The original models for Rocky and Ginger

There’s no news yet about the voice casting, though it seems rather unlikely that Mel Gibson will return given that he has now become, to use the parlance of our times, ‘problematic’ – or perhaps even ‘toxic’.

The original Chicken Run was co-directed by Nick Park and studio co-founder Peter Lord. It was an instant commercial and critical hit, hauling in $225m at the global box office and going on to be nominated at both the Golden Globes and BAFTAs.

The poster for the first Chicken Run film

Taking over for the sequel is Sam Fell, who co-directed Aardman’s first fully CGI animated feature film, Flushed Away, and has described Chicken Run 2 as an “almost-tribute to Mission: Impossible“. Karey Kirkpatrick assumes screenplay duties once again, while Lord and Park are back as executive producer and consultant respectively.

But perhaps the most intriguing part of the announcement is the news that Aardman is teaming up with Netflix for the first time, having done a deal with Pathé (distributor of the original film) and Studiocanal (who distributed the studio’s last three films: Early Man and both Shaun the Sheep flicks).

This throws up the question of what kind of cinema release the sequel will get, given the streaming giant’s previous reluctance to screen its films in cinemas and the refusal of big multiplex chains such as Vue, Odeon and Cineworld to show them.

The fowl realise what is to become of them in Chicken Run

Nonetheless, Peter Lord is excited by the artistic freedom offered by this collaboration: “Netflix feels like the ideal creative partner for this project: they celebrate the film-maker, which means we can make the film we want to make – the one we really care about – and share it with a global audience.”

It’ll also be fascinating to see whether two decades of innovation in stop-motion animation have overcome the unforeseen problems Aardman’s animators encountered while making the first film.

“We’ve chosen the worst possible animal in existence to animate,” Nick Park opined despairingly to your correspondent on the set of Chicken Run 20 years ago.

“They have large fat bodies covered in feathers and two thin legs. And in this kind of animation you really want something that’s got stability and is quite thin and light and doesn’t fly much.”

All photos: Aardman

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