Naming Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget's New Farm Was A Legal Minefield [Exclusive]
This post contains spoilers for "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget."
Happy Chicken Farms. Happy Egg Co. Organics Happy Family. Happy Farms. The Happy Chicken Project. In the worlds of farming and agriculture, "happy" is an extremely popular word — so much so that the new movie "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget" avoided it entirely when naming their fictional chicken farm with a dark side. "Originally it was called Happy Land Farms, but we couldn't go there for legal reasons because so many food producers use 'happy' in their branding that it was just a minefield," director Sam Fell told /Film's Hannah Shaw-Williams in a new interview.
The farm where mama chicken Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) ends up is certainly not a happy one, as trailers for the film have already revealed that its owners have a plan to turn their resident fowl into chicken nuggets. There's brainwashing, fattening up, and all manner of goings-on that might make similarly named real-life farms bristle at the idea of an implied connection. Thus, script writers instead went with the equally ironic and foreboding name "Fun Land Farms" instead. Its slogan, which Fell calls "an ironic twist" on the idyllic nature of the bird sanctuary home where Ginger starts the movie, is "Where chickens find their happy endings."
What is your happy ending?
"That's an underlying theme of happiness," Fell says. "What is your happy ending?" For Ginger, the chicken who led the poultry farm jailbreak that gave the original "Chicken Run" film its name, Fell says that her happy ending is not actually the hyper-secure world of the sanctuary. "Fun Land Farms is the dark side of the idea. And then in the long run, it turns out that that's not Ginger's happy ending at the beginning," he explains. "She might think it is, but in the end, actually [...] her happy place is to be engaging with the outside world, with her family by her side, and with Molly by her side."
Hilariously, Fell calls the sanctuary at the film's beginning "chicken Wakanda," a "perfect place" for Ginger, her mate Rocky (Zachary Levi), and their child Molly (Bella Ramsey) to live. While the outside world turns out to be pretty much as scary as Ginger remembered it being — Fell calls Fun Land Farms "a parallel and a kind of shadow side" version of the sanctuary — Ginger's also not made to be too settled and safe. "She's an activist, to be honest, Ginger. She's not really the sort of person that's going to retire quietly," he says.
Fun Land Farms works just as well
By calling the sinister nugget-making facility Fun Land Farms, the makers of "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget" got their own happy ending in the form of avoiding potential lawsuits. Defamation suits against the makers of movies don't happen often, but when real-life figures or the owners of brands feel they've been misrepresented on film, things can get messy quickly. The new stop animation film got the best of both worlds in that the farm title it ended up with evokes that of a theme park — an ominous contrast to the shady reality of the business — and writers were still able to add in a slogan to get audiences thinking about what a happy ending could look like for Ginger.
That being said, Fell's comment about her unwillingness to retire peacefully is exciting all on its own: could there be more "Chicken Run" in the future? That remains to be seen, but in the meantime, you can now watch "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget" on Netflix.