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What Took the ‘Chicken Run’ Sequel So Long? The Reasons Are Epic.
A flood, a fire, Covid and “Shrek” were just a few of the roadblocks to “Dawn of the Nugget,” arriving 23 years after the original hit.
When “Chicken Run” was released in theaters in June 2000, audiences and critics alike were charmed by the Claymation chickens Ginger and Rocky and the story of their escape from a sinister farm.
The movie, which was the first feature from Aardman Animations (home of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep), grossed more than $220 million and became the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film — a record it still holds.
Now the sequel “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” is finally arriving on Netflix. The director Sam Fell; Aardman’s creative director, Peter Lord; and the production designer Darren Dubicki explained what caused 23 years of delays.
At first it was sheer exhaustion.
Despite the instant success of the first film, Aardman, its partner on the production, DreamWorks, and the creators were in no rush to make a second one.
Sequels weren’t as much of an expectation then as they are today, and the arduous process of Claymation had left the team relatively exhausted and ready for a break.
“It’s like you’ve just run a marathon and someone says, ‘Hey, how about running another marathon?’ You think, ‘Well, not just now,’” Lord said. “So right back in 2000s, we were perhaps not ready. But after that, we had no objection to making a sequel at all.”
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