FEATHER REPORT

CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET The high-flying flock return.

There’s a Bond-esque scale to Dawn of the Nugget,’ says director Sam Fell (Paranorman). No eggs-aggeration here, for this long-awaited sequel to the beloved Aardman animation has blockbuster ambitions. Switching a break-out for a break-in, chicken Ginger (Thandiwe Newton), rooster Rocky (Zachary Levi) and their fine-feathered friends find they must leave the safety of their idyllic island chicken sanctuary to rescue one of their flock from a hi-tech nugget factory about to usher in the fast-food era. ‘What could be a more apocalyptic event than the dawn of the nugget for chickenkind?’ Fell says.

BEAK TRADING

In the 23 years since Chicken Run, technology has advanced exponentially, but Aardman remains reassuringly committed to tradition. ‘It’s very directly handmade,’ says Fell. ‘There’s a warmth to that.’ But that doesn’t mean the stop-motion masters haven’t moved with the times; CGI is used, sparingly, for set extensions, while puppet technology has evolved too. ‘They’re silicone puppets with clay heads,’ explains puppet team lead Anne King. ‘The first time around, the beaks were just squidged on. Now we have a 3D-printed plate, and a set of 15-24 beaks ready to be swapped and clicked into place. So there are a lot more shortcuts.’

WORLD’S BIGGEST FAN

Though Fell didn’t do any credited work on the original Chicken Run, the sequel is stuffed with callbacks and echoes, including more than one scene where Rocky uses mechanical assistance to take flight. ‘I definitely wanted to dive into the first film and establish that connection,’ says Fell. The filmmaker previously directed Flushed Away at Aardman, and considers Dawn of the Nugget part sequel, part reboot, which led to some major recasting decisions. ‘Some people changed, and some didn’t; it was just a personal choice,’ Fell explains. ‘It’s all part of bringing it into my realm and making it for now.’

BASE ODYSSEY

While Chicken Run lovingly lampooned The Great Escape and WW2 prison movies, Dawn of the Nugget is riffing on Mission: Impossible and 60s-era Bond, swapping Tweedy’s for ‘Fun-Land Farm’, a cutting-edge fortress where chickens enter, but never leave… ‘Sam said to me: “I want a Bond lair, but on steroids,”’ says production designer Darren Dubicki. ‘Ken Adam was a starting point.’ Every inch of Fun-Land is protected, even the moat, which is patrolled by exploding ducks. ‘Imagine: the world’s first nugget, and those kinds of industrial secrets – how heavily guarded would that be,’ Fell chuckles. ‘It’s Chicken: Impossible.’

AXE TO GRIND

Back and badder than ever is Miranda Richardson’s Mrs. Tweedy, who has left Mr. Tweedy in the mud and found a more capable co-conspirator in Dr. Fry (Nick Mohammed). But it wasn’t always that way. ‘We had a male villain first of all,’ Fell says. ‘We thought: new movie, new villain. Bond works that way. But the key was, thinking about Ginger as the central character. You think about Aliens – Ripley’s haunted by what she went through. That shadow she has to inevitability face again just seems so deep and strong. So it came out of Ginger, needing to have the rematch.’

CHICK FLICK

Naturally, breaking in to Fun-Land Farm will require teamwork, and the whole hen-semble is back, including Bunty, Fowler, Mac, Babs and newcomer Molly (voiced by The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey), who is Ginger and Rocky’s ‘chick off the old block’. The problem is, while Molly is just as free-spirited as her mother, growing up in a chicken utopia has left her oblivious to the dangers of the outside world. ‘The first film is a really sparky romantic comedy,’ Fell says. ‘And this is really more centred on Ginger and Molly, with Rocky as part of it. So it’s shifted quite a bit, but we found the balance.’

CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET STREAMS ON NETFLIX FROM 15 DECEMBER.