Chicken Run 2: Why Julia Sawahla and Mel Gibson are no longer in the voice cast
The entire cast of the first is reunited, except the two main actors!
In an interview for the Hollywood Reporter, Sam Fellthe director of the next Chicken Run: The Nugget Menace for Netflix, explains its choice to replace the voices of the two main actors Julia Sawalha And Mel Gibson. For the latter, he does not mention his escapadeswhich have been made public several times since the release of the first animated film in 2000. However, he considers that things have indeed changed since all this time.
While the British actress who dubbed Ginger in the first part is offended at not being present in the sequel, the director explains: “Even if I love the first film, which for me is a masterpiece, I don’t think I want to make a carbon copy of it.”
Sam Fell justifies his choice by citing the importance for him of appropriating the universe created by Nick Park and Peter Lord. He also implies that the two actors are now too old to reprise their roles: “During the first two years of development, I started to make my own decisions and felt, regarding casting, that we were 23 years later. It’s a long time. It’s almost a reboot to be honest. It’s a new director and a new era. And I wondered if all these casting choices made in the 1990s are still the right ones today.”
In this sequel, Ginger will be played by Thandiwe Newton and Rocky by Zachary Levi.
Chicken Run 2: Julia Sawalha won’t voice Ginger again because her voice “sounds too old”
In the case of Julia Sawahla And Mel Gibson, Sam Fell therefore considers that these actors “are no longer really suitable today.“Quite the opposite of the secondary actors who reprise their role 23 years after the first opus:”Sometimes I considered that it should stay the same”, declares the director.
Ginger and Rocky’s close guard is made up of Bernadette the slugger (Imelda Staunton), McBec the brain (Lynn Ferguson) and Babette the knitter (Jane Horrocks). Their legendary nemesis Mrs. Tweedy is also played by the same actress as in the first one, Miranda Richardson.
In addition to these reunions, new actors will lend their voices to the characters of Poulard and the two smuggler rats Ric and Rac. In the case of the old rooster nostalgic for the war, Benjamin Withrow passes the torch to David Bradley and the duo Timothy Spall/Phil Daniels gives way to Romesh Ranganathan and Daniel Mays for our favorite villains.
It is also the vagaries of late sequels: old ones leave and new ones take over, but all with the sole objective of preserving the integrity of the original work.
Chicken Run: The Nugget Menace will be available on December 15, 2023 on Netflix.
Chicken Run 2: The puppets also underwent quarantine during COVID
