Aardman Animation are wonderful.
The Bristol based animation studio is most famous for Nick Park and the Wallace & Gromit films – but those are far from the only masterpieces they’ve made. Their superlative CV goes all the way back to Morph in the 1970s, Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ video, and modern classics like Flushed Away, Arthur Christmas and Shaun The Sheep.
One of their most beloved movies though is their first ever feature length film, 2000’s Chicken Run. Loosely riffing on The Great Escape, the stop-motion classic followed chickens (voiced by a host of brilliant British actors) trying to escape a poultry farm, assisted by American cockerel voiced by Mel Gibson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVdlxwX6A7g
Despite being a massive critical and commercial smash – it remains the most successful stop-motion of all time, taking $224 million worldwide – we never got to see Rocky and co again.
That is until now – Aardman Animation have announced that they are work on a sequel, with the help of Pathe and Studio Canal. Sadly, Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park won’t be returning as director. Instead, that falls to Sam Fell, who also made Flushed Away, and the absolutely brilliant – and seriously underseen – ParaNorman for Laika animation (seriously, check out ParaNorman if you haven’t).
No word on plot yet, or who might return in the voice cast (Mel Gibson has somewhat fallen from grace since 2000).
