Mrs. Tweedy’s inclusion in “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” was as much a shock to “Chicken Run” fans as Ginger herself when she popped up in the sequel’s first trailer. Director Sam Fell, who previously co-helmed the animated films “Flushed Away,” “The Tale of Despereaux,” and “ParaNorman,” recently explained to Total Film (via GamesRadar+) why he elected to bring back the scheming farmer — who is now married to Dr. Fry (Nick Mohammed), the scientist behind her newly-minted nugget factory — for the sequel:
“We had a male villain first of all. We thought: new movie, new villain. Bond works that way. But the key was, thinking about Ginger as the central character. You think about ‘Aliens’ — Ripley’s haunted by what she went through. That shadow she has to inevitability face again just seems so deep and strong. So it came out of Ginger, needing to have the rematch.”
Also returning for this rematch are “Chicken Run” voice actors Jane Horrocks (Babs, still knitting like there’s no tomorrow), Lynn Ferguson (Mac, presumably still working on that thrust issue), and Imelda Staunton (Bunty — what, you thought she wouldn’t be back, you old sausage?), with Romesh Ranganathan, Daniel Mays, and David Bradley among the fresh additions to the voice cast. We’ll see how they and a creative team that includes writers Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell (who wrote the first “Chicken Run”) and Rachel Tunnard fare when “Dawn of the Nugget” begins streaming on December 15, 2023, on Netflix.
For Ginger and the flock, all is at stake when the dangers of the human world come home to roost; they’ll stop at nothing even if it means putting their own hard-won freedom at risk to save chicken-kind. This time, they’re breaking in!
