Two months before the arrival of its highly anticipated sequel, “Chicken Run” and its great chicken escape joins the Netflix catalog. With a record under his belt that hasn’t been broken since its release in 2000!
A chicken on a wall, pecking… a record that lasts! Since its release in 2000, Peter Lord and Nick Park’s Chicken Run, a stop-motion animated adventure comedy and the first feature film from Aardman Animations (in partnership with DreamWorks Animation), has established itself as the coolest chicken movie all time. But he also maintained an impressive record.
The story takes place in 1950 in Yorkshire, England, and follows the peaceful life of the Tweedy farm henhouse. The food is plentiful and the place is warm. All the tenants seem to like the farm except the hen Ginger who is far from sharing the opinion of her sisters because Ginger dreams of wide open spaces and freedom. It’s become a bit of an obsession and every day she tries unsuccessfully to escape the barnyard.
But Ginger is courageous and she uses patience to make her volatile friends understand that the fence is not around the farm, but in their heads. She regains hope when Rocky Rhodes, a free and lonely American rooster boy, arrives in the barnyard. For Ginger, Rocky is the savior of all the chickens.
If he could teach them to fly, they would be able to escape. An essential escape to avoid the inevitable because Mr. Tweedy, the owner of the farm, has decided to put them all in the pan one day or another.
To tell this wonderful story of freedom and emancipation, the producers chose the voices of Julia Sawalha, Mel Gibson, Tony Haygarth, Miranda Richardson, Phil Daniels, Lynn Ferguson, Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton (soon to return in front of the camera for the last season of The Crown) and Benjamin Whitrow for this saucy barnyard.
Critically acclaimed, Chicken Run was also an incredible commercial success, grossing over $227 million. As evidenced by the site The Numbers – film industry data website that tracks box office revenues – Chicken Run became the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film in history and DreamWorks Animation’s biggest hit until which Shrek, in 2001, doubles. But it remains the first in the category of stop-motion animated films and has been for 23 years!
It is therefore time to revisit this little gem which arrives today in the Netflix catalog, while waiting to discover its sequel entitled Chicken Run: the Nuggets Menace which will be released directly on Netflix on December 15, 2023.
Our favorite playdough chickens will have to face a new threat. Finally free, Ginger and Rocky spend peaceful days on an island, far from the dangers of the human world. They even gave birth to a little Molly. Except that on the continent, the rest of the chickens face a new and terrible threat. This time, Ginger and her team do not hesitate to put their hard-won freedom at risk to try to penetrate a dangerous fortress!