Voice of Rocky, the rooster boy from the first “Chicken Run”, Mel Gibson is absent from the sequel Chicken Run: The Nuggets Menace. The director of the film explains why.
In the summer of 2000, a small group of hand-made clay chickens escaped from a chicken coop to make movie history.
Lagging behind the incredible success of Chicken – the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time – is Aardman, the British pioneers of stop-motion animation. They are already known for their Wallace & Gromit short films but Chicken Run is their first feature film.
Nearly a quarter of a century later, a sequel has just emerged with Chicken Run: The Nuggets Menace. In the first film, the group – led by the courageous Ginger (voiced in the original version by Julia Sawalha), supported by the not-so-brave rooster Rocky (voiced by Mel Gibson) – escaped from Mrs. Tweedy’s farm in a escapist movie parody.
In The Nuggets Menace, Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi replace Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson respectively, and Bella Ramsey lends her voice to their courageous daughter, Molly. And it is Sam Fell who succeeds Peter Lord as director. Interviewed by The Hollywood Reporterhe explains why he chose another voice cast to dub the film:
“Even though I love the first film, which I consider a masterpiece, I didn’t want to make a carbon copy of it. I didn’t want to be too precious. During those first two years , so I started making my own decisions and from a casting perspective, it’s 23 years later. That’s a long time.
To be honest, it’s almost a reboot. It’s a new director and a new era. And I started to wonder if all those casting decisions made in the late 90s were still the best for today’s roles. It’s a very personal creative process and I felt like in some cases it didn’t quite fit anymore.“
And to explain more precisely why it’s no longer Mel Gibson who dubs Rocky: “Mel was a fabulous choice for Rocky when he was that playboy cock. He was a movie star and Rocky was a movie star. It was perfect. But now Rocky is more vulnerable. He is a father for the first time. It’s more Ginger’s film, so her role is different.“
Chicken Run: The Nuggets Menace is currently available on Netflix.