Chicken Run 2 sets surprising Rotten Tomatoes record for Netflix

Sequel to ‘Chicken Run’ has released amid controversy over ‘ageist’ cast shake-up

Netflix’s latest No 1 movie Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget has set a surprising new record on review-aggregation platform Rotten Tomatoes.

The follow-up to Aardman Animations’ 2000 blockbuster Chicken Run was released on the streaming platform on 8 December amid fallout over a contentious cast shake-up.

The biggest change to the sequel was the studio’s decision to replace Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson, who voiced the lead characters Ginger and Rocky in the original film, with Thandiwe Newton (Westworld) and Zachary Levi (Shazam!) respectively.

The movie’s release comes three years after Sawalha, 55, alleged she had been dropped from Dawn of the Nugget after being “informed out of the blue, via email” that her voice “now sounds ‘too old’ and they want a younger actress to reprise the role”.

Despite the controversy, the new claymation film has set a new Rotten Tomatoes record, earning the highest-ever audience score for any Aardman feature yet.

Dawn of the Nugget has a combined audience score of 86 per cent, signifying the percentage of users who have rated a movie or show positively.

The original earned an audience score of just 65 per cent, with other Aardman films such as Flushed Away (65 per cent), Shaun the Sheep (81 per cent), and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit (79 per cent) also trailing behind the Chicken Run sequel at the time of writing.

The movie also earned a Certified Fresh rating of 79 per cent on the Tomatometer, with largely positive reviews from critics.

However, it’s likely the scores will change as more ratings come in.

In her three-star review for The Independent, Clarisse Loughrey describes the film as a Ocean’s Eleven-style heist mixed with Mission: Impossible”, praising Dawn of the Nugget as a “convenient, but clever, reversal of the previous film’s parody of The Great Escape”.

Dawn of the Nugget follows Ginger as she builds a peaceful sanctuary far away from Tweedy Farm, the grim chicken coop she and Rocky escaped from in the first installment.

Following the eventual hatching of their daughter Molly (played by Bella Ramsey), the new parents think they’ve found their “happily ever after”, unaware that the whole of chicken-kind faces a “terrible new threat”.

“For Ginger and her team, even if it means putting their own hard-won freedom at risk – this time, they’re breaking in!” an official logline reads.

Since its release, viewers of the film have been highlighting a “chilling” Easter egg that occurs in the final scene.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is currently streaming on Netflix.