It was the sequel film fans didn’t realise they needed, but when Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget came out before Christmas – 23 years after the original – it topped Netflix’s most-watched charts for weeks.
Speaking to Sky News, director Sam Fell admits: “You send it out into the world and it’s like a kid really, you hope everyone is going to treat it nicely.”
It has been a vindication for Fell, who made headlines even before a frame of the film had been shot after he decided to recast the voices of Rocky and Ginger – replacing Mel Gibson and Julia Sawalha with Zachary Levi and Thandiwe Newton.
Image: Sam Fell said he wanted to be ‘brave’ when making the sequel. Pic: Aardman/Netflix
He admits he was “surprised” by the reaction. “I didn’t expect any feathers to be ruffled. But I suppose, looking back on it, you’re going to have to break a few eggs to make a new omelette,” he said.
Fell explained that the cast refresh had “more to do with the time gap – not age in particular – but just who’s around now”.
Describing his approach to the film as more a “reboot” than a sequel, he added: “You have to be brave and just move forward with the way you think it should be…
“At the time it seemed like a perfectly natural thing to try, Britain’s changed, the world’s changed, let’s shift the texture and sound of the movie for now.”
The filmmaker said it had been particularly satisfying to gauge audience reactions to new characters such as Rocky and Ginger’s daughter Molly, who is voiced by Bella Ramsey.
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“Bella’s sound is just so unique… we caught Bella just at the right time,” he said.
Image: Pic: Aardman/Netflix
Rise Of The Vegan Pancake
Fell said he was “just very lucky” to cast Ramsey after they starred in Game Of Thrones – but before they had gone on to work on award-winning zombie drama The Last Of Us.
“When you work with an actor of that age a lot changes in a few years and that’s how long we took to make the movie.”
Given that it took over two decades to bring the claymation sequel to screens, Fell teased we can expect a third movie in: “2055… The Rise Of The Vegan Pancake!”
“I can’t promise anything,” he said while laughing. “It is a slow game… but, you know, it hopefully won’t be a quarter of a century to the next one.
“There are ideas of movies, maybe a spin-off thing because there were some new characters that are interesting, like Molly…There’s certainly many stories you can tell with these characters.”
Image: Pic: Aardman/Netflix
Think like a chicken
While Fell admits winning the BAFTA would be “the icing on the cake”, he said making the film was life-changing in one fundamental way.
“I’ve not eaten a nugget [since]…I stopped eating meat after I did some [background] research…. I just start to care about chickens a great deal.
“I hope it’s made some people think like a chicken and see the world a bit more from a chicken’s point of view.”
But Fell realises that might be a long shot, especially given how he wasn’t even able to persuade Aardman’s caterers to reconsider their menu during their shoot.
“The canteen served chicken every Wednesday, as much as I protested about it, and the crew enjoyed eating it!”
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is available to watch now on Netflix.
It is “pretty surreal”, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon admits, finding herself at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list.
When I meet the actress alongside her co-writer, best-selling author Harlan Coben, overnight the pair have learned that their thriller is now at number one.
He jokes: “I was texting her last night and saying you’ll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!”
Image: Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben told Katie Spencer about their novel Gone Before Goodbye
As one of the most successful authors in the world, Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground.
Not content with running a hugely successful production company responsible for a string of hits, as well as one of the most successful book clubs in the world, she explains she felt compelled to give writing a try.
“People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it’s impossible to just choose one kind of life.
“Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49.”
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Gone Before Goodbye, a thriller about a talented surgeon who finds herself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, is the result of Witherspoon daring to put her head above the parapet.
Image: Witherspoon says she felt compelled to give writing a try
Coben admits he was “a little wary” at first.
“I don’t co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like ‘dang that’s good, we can do something with that’.”
While countless celebrities work with ghostwriters, Coben says: “I said to her from day one ‘it’s only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don’t do that’. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me.”
Image: Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground
Witherspoon explains: “He was like ‘if we’re going to do this, it’s going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high.”
“I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage,” Coben laughs. “You might like the final taste, but you don’t want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here.”
When it came to writing, Coben says they “fell into a rhythm right away”, working together in three-hour stints, “back and forth with a yellow legal pad – what about this? What about that?”
Image: Coben says they ‘fell into a rhythm right away’
Witherspoon says it “feels really deeply personal” to have their work now in print.
“Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people’s worlds and it’s already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal.”
While the story seems an obvious fit for being adapted to the screen, perhaps with a certain blonde actress in the leading role, Coben says that was never their intention.
“The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say ‘this would make a really great movie’. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience.”
Given that their collaboration is already selling in big numbers, will the pair team up again to write a second?
Witherspoon says: “Let’s just see what people think of this one first.”
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Associate professor of neurology Dr Laura Stein told Sky’s US partner NBC News: ” The most well-described risk factors include a predisposition [family history of aneurysm], high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and inflammation.”
She went on to explain that most fatal ruptured aneurysms are in the brain, killing about one in three patients.
“When it’s a blood vessel that’s in the head and it bleeds, there’s a much higher risk of having a very bad problem just because the brain is enclosed in a fixed space,” Dr Stein added.
Low-risk aneurysms are monitored by doctors for growth or abnormalities, and there are a series of potential treatment options for those considered dangerous.
Elsewhere in The Kardashians clip, Kim admitted that her ex-husband Kanye West will be in her life “no matter what” because of the four kids they share together.