Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget Had To Retcon The First Movie's Ending [Set Visit]
It's been over 20 years since Aardman made history with the release of the first "Chicken Run." The studio's first feature film, it became the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time. This means that anticipations are quite high for the follow-up, "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget." How do you follow what was a rather simple premise, two decades later? Well, not without some hiccups.
The new film finds Ginger and Rocky living with the other chickens on an idyllic island. The couple have a daughter, named Molly, the first new chicken born on the island. This is a rather big retcon from the end of the first movie, which ends with a bunch of chicks on the island being trained by Fowler. Turns out, this was a conscious choice based on two important points.
First of all, there are only two roosters on the island — Rocky and Fowler. It seems the folks at Aardman aren't super keen on the idea of one of them having a harem, so Rocky is faithfully together with Ginger, and Fowler ... is probably not up for it at his age. When /Film visited the set of the new "Chicken Run" last December, writer Hannah Shaw-Williams talked to director Sam Fell, who said there was an idea to have more roosters at one point. "Early on when we were developing the story, we had a whole bunch of funny rooster characters."
The other reason was that it made sense for the story to have Molly be lonely and without friends — and curious about the world outside the island. "She does meet a friend when she goes out there," Fell continued. "She meets a young friend called Frizzle, who's a really fun new character to do."
Meet Frizzle
The character of Frizzle kind of replaces all of the little chicks from the end of the first movie. According to model maker James Young, she is "sort of [Molly's] best friend throughout the film. She's from Liverpool." Young also praised voice actor Josie Sedgwick-Davies, calling her performance "fantastic, really cool." According to director Sam Fell, the team took a page out of "ParaNorman" and put out a casting call for Frizzle in order to find someone new, fresh, "and a little raw." He describes Sedgwick-Davies as "just like this slightly nutty working-class girl, but so, so, so endearing and funny."
Frizzle is based on and named after a particular breed of chicken called frizzle, which are recognizable because of their frizzled or curled feathers. Even though the frizzle is recognized as its own breed in many European countries, the U.S. sadly doesn't recognize it as a breed. How Frizzle gets involved with Molly and what sort of shenanigans the two get to before Ginger inevitably breaks into a new farm remains to be seen. But for now, at least you can be prepared for "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget" and how it changes its predecessor.
And hey, if you're absolutely against retcons, you can always imagine that all the other chicks from the end of the first film died horribly and the adults are just hiding that from Molly. I'm kidding.