At the end of Chicken Run, you’ll remember, Ginger and the gang of Tweedy’s Farm escapees had made it to the ‘chikin sanctuary’ on a lovely little island in the middle of a lake – replete with swing set for Babs, engineering school for Mac, and tiki bar for rats Nick and Fetcher. If you were after somewhere to kick back after having escaped the poultry equivalent of Colditz, it was pretty much perfect. By the time of Aardman's upcoming sequel Dawn Of The Nugget, though, things have got a little more sophisticated on what’s now known as Chicken Island.
“It's Wakanda for chickens,” director Sam Fell tells Empire in the new issue, promising an idyllic safe haven in keeping with the grander scope of the new movie. “The whole film is a bigger scale really,” he says. In the intervening years, Chicken Island has developed into a rich society full of hand-made (or, wing-made) flourishes. “It’s all organic and warm, not a straight line in the place – nothing regimented, very organic and idyllic,” Fell says. “It's a beautiful, natural place. We spent time early on developing the world – the flowers, their gardens, and just thinking, ‘How would a chicken want to live? How would a chicken build a house? What's their world like?’”
That meant Fell and the creative team had to start to think like chickens. “You get yourself down to that level and start imagining objects – how big they are, and how you might utilise them. They're obviously semi-human, these chickens, they talk. It was just nice thinking it through from scratch. ‘What do they need on that island?’ They don't need that much actually, chickens – that's what I like about them.” Sounds perfect, honestly – Chicken Island forever.
Read more about Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget in the November 2023 issue of Empire, on newsstands now. Order a copy online here, or become an Empire member to access the digital edition now. Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget comes to Netflix this December, following its debut at the BFI London Film Festival 2023 in October.