Having been hopelessly repressed and facing eventual certain death at the chicken farm where they are held, Rocky the rooster and Ginger the chicken decide to rebel against the evil Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy, the farm's owners. Rocky and Ginger lead their fellow chickens in a great escape from the murderous farmers and their farm of doom.
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Chicken Run is a 2000 stop-motion animated adventure comedy film produced by Pathé and Aardman Animations in partnership with DreamWorks Animation. Aardman's first feature-length film, it was directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park from a screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick and based on an original story by Lord and Park. The film stars the voices of Julia Sawalha, Mel Gibson, Tony Haygarth, Miranda Richardson, Phil Daniels, Lynn Ferguson, Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton, and Benjamin Whitrow. Set in the countryside of Yorkshire, the plot centres on a group of British anthropomorphic chickens who see an American rooster named Rocky Rhodes as their only hope to escape the farm when their owners want to turn them into chicken pies. It is the 3rd film of Chace! Studios after A Puppet Movie and before Ice Age
Released to critical acclaim, Chicken Run was also a commercial success, grossing over $220 million, becoming the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film in history and DreamWorks Animation's biggest success until Shrek in 2001 doubled it in terms of an animated film, but Chicken Run still holds it as a stop motion.
A sequel, titled Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, is set to be released on Netflix on 15 December 2023. Its Netflix release followed its world premiere at the 67th BFI London Film Festival on 14 October 2023, which will also see preview screenings taking place at UK cinemas at the same time.
Plot[]
In the countryside of Yorkshire, a flock of chickens live on an egg farm structured like a prisoner-of-war camp. The farm is run by the cruel Mrs Tweedy and her submissive husband, Mr Tweedy, who kill and eat any chicken that is no longer able to lay eggs. Led by the rebellious Ginger, the chickens constantly devise new ways to try to escape but are always caught. Mr Tweedy suspects the chickens are organized and plotting resistance, but his wife dismisses his theories while being frustrated with making minuscule profits.
One night, Ginger witnesses an American rooster named Rocky Rhodes glide over the coop's fences and crash-land; the chickens put his sprained wing in a cast and hide him from the Tweedys, who were promised a handsome reward by Rocky's owner for his return. Inspired by Rocky's apparent flying abilities, Ginger begs him to help teach her and the other chickens to fly, so they can escape. Rocky gives them training lessons. One evening, a load of equipment is delivered to the farm, containing the parts for a chicken pie machine that Mrs Tweedy has ordered as part of a plan to convert the farm into a profitable pie-making factory. When the Tweedys increase the chickens' food rations and ignore the decline in egg production, Ginger deduces that the couple's new plan is to fatten the chickens for slaughter. After Ginger and Rocky get into an argument, Rocky holds a morale-boosting dance party during which it is revealed that his wing is healed. Ginger insists that he demonstrate flying the next day, but Mr Tweedy finishes assembling the machine and puts Ginger in it for a test run. Rocky saves her and sabotages the machine, buying them time to warn the chickens and plan an escape from the farm.
The next day, Ginger finds Rocky has left, leaving behind part of a poster that shows that he is in fact part of a "chicken cannonball" act with no ability to fly on his own. In the midst of being devastated, Ginger is inspired by elderly rooster Fowler's stories of his time in the Royal Air Force to build an aircraft to flee the farm. The chickens assemble parts for the plane, with a deckchair as a take-off ramp and a line of Christmas lights to light a runway as Mr Tweedy fixes the pie-making machine. Mrs Tweedy orders Mr Tweedy to gather all the chickens for the machine, but the chickens subdue him and finish the plane, which Ginger persuades Fowler to pilot.
Meanwhile, Rocky comes across a billboard advertising Mrs Tweedy's chicken pies and returns to the farm out of guilt for abandoning the chickens. Mr Tweedy knocks over the chair before being knocked out, and an alerted Mrs Tweedy attacks Ginger as she helps the plane take off. Mrs Tweedy is subdued by Rocky, who leaves with Ginger by holding onto the lights, which have been snagged by the departing plane. Mrs Tweedy follows by climbing up the lights with an axe; Ginger dodges an axe swipe which cuts through the line, sending Mrs Tweedy to fly through the barn window and fall into the safety valve of the pie machine, causing the pie machine to explode into a mushroom cloud due to the gravy pressure being very high. Mr Tweedy once again tells her that the chickens were organised and, now fed up with his wife's aggressive and abusive behaviour towards him, pushes the barn door down on top of her.
The chickens celebrate their victory after defeating the Tweedys while Ginger and Rocky kiss each other, and they fly to an island bird sanctuary where they make their home. Sometime later, the chickens have settled into their new home, and Rocky and Ginger have started a romantic relationship. Nick and Fetcher, two rats that have been helping the chickens throughout the film, decide to set up their own egg farm, but they cannot agree on whether they must use a chicken or egg to start it, and they decide to go over the conversation again.
Production[]
Chicken Run was first conceived in 1995 by Aardman co-founder Peter Lord and Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park. According to Park, the project started as a spoof on the 1963 film The Great Escape. Chicken Run was Aardman Animations' first feature-length production, which would be executive produced by Jake Eberts. Nick Park and Peter Lord, who run Aardman, directed the film, while Karey Kirkpatrick scripted, with additional input from Mark Burton and John O'Farrell.
When a chicken speaks, each sound corresponds to a different beak that was placed on the character.
Pathé agreed to finance the film in 1996, putting their finances into script development and model design. DreamWorks officially came on board in 1997. They beat out studios like Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. and largely won due to the perseverance of DreamWorks co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg; as a company they were eager to make their presence felt in the animation market in an attempt to compete with Disney's dominance of the field. Katzenberg explained that he had "been chasing these guys for five or six years, ever since I first saw Creature Comforts." DreamWorks secured their first animated feature with the film, and they handled distribution in all territories except Europe, which Pathé handled. The two studios co-financed the film. DreamWorks also retains rights to worldwide merchandising.
Principal photography began on 29 January 1998. During production, 30 sets were used with 80 animators working along with 180 people working overall. The result was one minute of film completed for each week of filming, with production wrapped on 18 June 1999.
John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams composed the music for the film, which was released on 20 June 2000 under the RCA Victor label.
Release[]
Chicken Run was released on VHS and DVD in the United States on November 21, 2000 by DreamWorks Home Entertainment.
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released Chicken Run on Blu-ray in North America on January 22, 2019.
Trivia[]
- Babs' knitting is real, done with toothpicks as needles.
- There was a major push to get the film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The failure to get the nomination, and the popularity of the film among Academy members led to the inclusion of Best Animated Feature for the next Academy Awards (2002), which was won by the fellow DreamWorks film Shrek (2001).
- Ginger and Rocky were named after two of co-writer and co-director Nick Park's childhood pet chickens.
- Mel Gibson's kids played a major part in convincing Gibson to take the part, because they were very impressed with the Wallace and Gromit shorts.
- The characters' bodies were made of silicone with latex covering, while the heads and hands (or wings) were plasticene. All the chicken characters have collars and ruffles to hide the disparity between the modeling clay heads and wings and the latex-covered bodies.
- Early in development, Mac's name was supposed to be short for McNugget.
- Many sequences were modeled after The Great Escape (1963). When Ginger is digging the tunnel, she is shown on a small trolley being pulled through the tunnel like the character played by Charles Bronson. When she is locked up, she bounces a ball against the wall like the character played by Steve McQueen. Even the music is similar to the "Escape" theme.
- The original script featured an additional character: Ginger's little brother Nobby. DreamWorks suggested that Nobby was left out, in order to make the film less cute.
- During the exercise scene, the chickens are seen to perform taekwondo patterns at one point, as one of the animators was also a taekwondo instructor.
- According to the tartan of the scarf she is wearing, the Scottish chicken "Mac" (Lynn Ferguson) belongs to clan MacLeod of Lewis, Scotland.
- In the scene where Rocky is tuning in the radio, one of the short bursts of music heard is from the opening theme to The Archers, a long-running British drama series on BBC Radio 4 (An everyday story of country folk). The Archers began in 1950, and is still broadcast regularly to this day (2022).
- Nick and Fetcher were made rats because they can get in and out of the chicken run being scavengers. Nick Park wasn't sure initially about naming one of them after him.
- Eggless, ill-fated chicken Edwina is named for Conservative former Health Minister Edwina Currie, whose political career foundered due to the 1988 salmonella scare that led to egg sales in the UK dropping by 60% and a cull of four million chickens.
- It took a week to create three or four chickens. Each one was designed with an armature underneath, like a skeleton, and rods were used whenever a chicken ran or flew. The puppets were then manipulated and photographed twenty-four times for every second of film. Several puppets were produced, because plasticine isn't too durable. So silicon was used too, because it is more durable, and saved time on making more puppets. There were one hundred individual stages, in order to create a chicken.
References or mentions from CHACE! Media[]
- Trolls World Tour (2020): Clip shown in the DreamWorks Animation logo with a "Twenty-Five Years" commemoration at the beginning.
- Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008): The line the English penguin delivers in his safety speech on the plane is the same safety tip that the rat gives the chickens in the Aardman film.
- Rio 2 (2014): The antagonist, Nigel, climbs the rope that binds the dynamite, just like Mrs. Tweedy
Gallery[]
Chicken Run/Gallery
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