Netflix has released the first trailer for Aardman’s next movie: a follow up to the animation studio’s beloved 2000 poultry jailbreak Chicken Run. As with all good sequels, it looks like a twist on the original—this time the Chickens have to break in to somewhere rather than break out.
Yes, this time Ginger (now played by Thandiwe Newton, replacing original Chicken Run star Julia Sawalha) and her friends, having escaped to island paradise at the end of the first movie, find themselves staging a break-in at an elaborately high-tech chicken farm—think a little more Bond villain base, and a little less nesting huts and hay. But the more things have changed in the last two decades of chicken farming, some things have stayed the same… like the fact the farm is run by none other than Miranda Richardson’s returning villain Melisha Tweedy, by new villains Dr. Fry (Nick Mohammed) and Reginald Smith (Peter Serafinowicz).
It all looks suitably goofy as one would expect out of Aardman’s riff on Mission: Impossible—a franchise that’s only gotten wilder since Chicken Run first released—but what’s most interesting here is seeing some of the new voice cast in action. Plenty of familiar stars return, like Imelda Staunton, Lynn Ferguson, and Jane Horrocks as hen trio Bunty, Mac, and Babs, but they’re all anchored around the controversial replacement of Sawalha as Ginger, and the much less controversial replacement of Mel Gibson as Rocky the Rooster, now played by Shazam star Zach Levi. The latter was more necessary given the trajectory of Gibson’s persona in the last two decades, but it’ll be interesting to see just how the new cast vibes with the returning stars.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget hits Netflix December 15.
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