Producers and animators behind Netflix and Disney's latest releases are giving special talks at Manchester Animation Festival (MAF) this November.
14.10.2023 - 16:09 / variety.com
Ellise Shafer Before the world premiere of long-awaited sequel “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” at the BFI London Film Festival, the team behind the Aardman production revealed that they set out to make a “feminist classic” that is also an “homage to heist films.” “Dawn of the Nugget” comes 23 years after the original “Chicken Run” was released. In the sequel, Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) embark on another dangerous adventure when daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey) flees their idyllic island home for the mainland.
“The last one was an homage to escape films, and this one is an homage to heist films,” writer Karey Kirkpatrick said. “John [O’Farrell] and I started on this movie in 2014, and we started out with an inside joke, actually.
We knew it was a heist film, but what’s the diamond in this heist for chickens? They don’t care about money. So we thought, the diamond is a kid.” O’Farrell added that the story originally focused on a father-son relationship, but along with writer Rachel Tunnard, they decided to center the hens instead.
“We did two drafts of a father-son story, and then all the women at Aardman went, ‘What are you doing? This is a feminist classic!'” O’Farrell said. “Ginger is a feminist hero, an icon, and so we said, ‘OK you’re right, we’re going to make it a mother-daughter story.'” Director Sam Fell was also present at the premiere — which didn’t include any stars of the voice cast due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike — and explained why it took so long to come up with another “Chicken Run” film.
“The bar was so high I just knew we had to come up with something at least as great, on its own terms,” Fell said. “So many people love it that we had to do it justice, which is why it took
.Producers and animators behind Netflix and Disney's latest releases are giving special talks at Manchester Animation Festival (MAF) this November.
Friends.In a joint interview on CBS’s Today show, Marta Kauffman and David Crane discussed their shock at the news of Perry’s passing at the age of 54 on Saturday (28 October).“He was happy and chipper,” Kauffman said of Perry, who played Chandler Bing for 10 seasons of the hit sitcom. “He didn’t seem weighed down by anything. He was in a really good place, which is why this seems so unfair.”Kauffman said she was in “utter shock” after hearing the news last weekend.
Peter Caranicas Deputy Editor Adam Driver, star of Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” will travel to Camerimage, the cinematography-oriented film festival, to accept Special EnergaCamerimage Award for an Actor. He will also introduce the film, one of the entries in the Camerimage Main Competition and a prominent awards contender this season. The fest will run in Toruń.
CBS is making its latest moves in late-night.
Naman Ramachandran Lila Aviles‘ “Totem” has won the global feature award at the annual Jakarta Film Week. The film previously won awards at the Berlin, Hong Kong, Durban and Beijing film festivals. The direction award for best Indonesian feature film went to Jeremias Nyangoen’s directorial debut “Women of Rote Island.” The film bowed at Busan earlier in October.
Brent Lang Executive Editor David Robert Mitchell and Maika Monroe are reuniting on “They Follow,” a sequel to the 2014 cult horror hit, “It Follows.” Neon, the Oscar-winning studio behind “Parasite,” will co-produce the movie and release it domestically. The studio will introduce it to international buyers at this year’s American Film Market. Principal photography will commence in 2024.
John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “All of Us Strangers,” Andrew Haigh, U.K., U.S.) Setting a high benchmark for Valladolid’s main competition, “a curious kind of ghost story, at once incredibly tender and profoundly devastating as it slowly reveals its secrets,” Variety wrote in its review. Written and directed by Haigh.
England held their nerve to beat Fiji in an enthralling quarter-final clash in Marseille, setting up a date with defending champions South Africa in Paris this Saturday.
A Scottish bar has been crowned as one of the top 50 in the world, while another has been named as having the best cocktail menu around the globe.
The MediaPro Studio will look to invest in literary and library program rights in the U.S., the Spanish company’s boss told delegate here at Mipcom Cannes today, as it unveiled several new projects during a Mipcom Cannes keynote.
Renny Harlin, director of the next three films of The Strangers franchise, is teasing that the trilogy opens up a whole new universe that could potentially lead to more installments in the future.
A 50-year-old mum of two has become famous for running through her village topless.
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Nearly a quarter-century has passed since Aardman hatched its first feature, and the generation that flipped for “Chicken Run” — tickled by the novelty of watching a pseudo-serious genre movie rendered silly by an ensemble of stop-motion poultry — has grown up to be parents. Distributed by DreamWorks, the 2000 toon reimagined “The Great Escape” with chickens, as a doomed flock schemed to fly the coop of a WWII-style concentration camp run by the intimidating Mrs.
By any metric, 23 years is a long time to wait for a sequel to Chicken Run, even when you factor in the fiendishly slow gestation of Aardman Animations’ meticulous stop-motion process. Surprisingly, it still feels fresh, not just because of the spring-clean of the core voice cast — Mel Gibson being the highest-profile casualty, lopped off as the “lone free-ranger” Rocky — but because, in the hands of director Sam Fell and his writing team, Dawn of The Nugget delivers a cleverly modern kind of family entertainment that, while it works to a formula, never feels written by committee.
as well as actor Adam Sandler’s two teenage daughters, 14-year-old Sunny and 17-year-old Sadie. taken before the screening, Sandler can be seen standing up in a white floral shirt while his daughters sit in front of him.
Taylor Swift arrived tonight in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles for the premiere of her Eras Tour concert film premiere at The Grove, generating more noise and glitz than an Oscar Best Song performance atop the Academy Museum. Heck, the fountain at the outdoor luxe Rick Caruso-owned mall was spouting pink water.
UPDATED with lineup additions, 11:01 AM: The American Film Institute today added some films to its 2023 lineup. The five films selected by Guest Artistic Director Greta Gerwig are All That Jazz, An American in Paris, Wings of Desire A Matter of Life and Death and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. She will introduce the latter two.
Nicki Nicole traveled to Miami for the Billboard Latin Music Awards. During rehearsals, she told HOLA! USA about her excitement about attending an Inter Miami game while in town to support her country’s most famous footballer, Lionel Messi.
Get ready for the return of Chicken Run!
China’s Pingyao International Film Festival has announced the line-up for its seventh edition (October 11-18), which will open with Wei Shujun’s Only The River Flows and close with the world premiere of Fei Yu’s Football On The Roof.