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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 8 months

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Chickens/Spirit of Blue Sky

Well look at that, a full trailer for CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET is finally here.

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CHICKEN RUN is a long-time favorite of mine. I caught it in theaters back in the summer of 2000, at the age of 7. I must've watched the VHS copy I had multiple times. I even had, of all things, a CHICKEN RUN lunchbox depicting Rocky the rooster in the sky on his tricycle. To say I loved this movie is understatement, and to this day? It still *slaps*...

When I learned that CHICKEN RUN was getting a sequel way back in... I want to say late 2017? Early 2018? I was definitely curious and cautious. I was later dismayed to hear that Ginger's voice actress Julia Sawalha wasn't returning because apparently she was told that she was too old. She's going to be 55 in a few days... But her replacement, Thandiwe Newton, is 50. Soon to be 51... That's some nonsense that I'll never understand to this day.

That being said, a new CHICKEN RUN was cause for celebration anyhow. After some character posters and small clips and reveals, we finally have an idea of what this movie is going to be like. I'm definitely surprised that Mrs. Tweedy is back, instead of putting the chooks up against a new menace, and it appears to be retreading similar factory-farming perils and escaping a dinner plate fate stuff. This time, as the trailer and poster emphasize, with the mechanics reversed: A break-in movie rather than an escape, we went from THE GREAT ESCAPE and STALAG 17 homages to James Bond and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. "Chicken: Impossible"?

It actually makes a lot of sense. CHICKEN RUN is clearly set in middle-postwar England, a dreary midcentury setting that many peg at the late 1950s judging by the old tech and such, but it's actually set in - at the earliest - November 1961. How's that? Well, I am nerdy about certain things, and I know that the song Rocky is listening to in that scene where he pedals by the Mrs. Tweedy's Chicken Pies billboard came out in November 1961. That song, Dion's 'The Wanderer', was a #10 hit in the UK. So, CHICKEN RUN is set either in late 1961 or sometime in 1962. I'd imagine it doesn't go farther than that, at least not to the days The Beatles had finally made a splash. (Their first official single, 'Love Me Do', released in October 1962.) It's a small detail, I get it. I'm sure the filmmakers behind the original didn't think about it as much as I do, they probably thought "Oh, a '50s song, let's have him be listening to that!" Or maybe they did overthink it, too!

So... CHICKEN RUN 2 going for a mid-1960s James Bond spy movie vibe, completely with a very '60s spy movie-looking evil lair-like place, checks out. Either way, I'm game to see it. It'll hit different seeing it on a small screen, but that's just how it all goes, doesn't it? Aardman's previous feature, FARMAGEDDON: A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE (which was very similar to CHICKEN RUN), played theatrically in the UK a few months before COVID hit. Here in the states, it hit Netflix on Valentine's Day 2020, just a little before the outbreak. Even in a world where COVID never happened, it probably still wouldn't have had a chance at hitting theaters. (Though the weirdest thing is, Lionsgate at one point was going to release it theatrically, like they had done w/ the first SHAUN THE SHEEP movie. If you saw EARLY MAN in theaters in February 2018, like I did, you saw a FARMAGEDDON teaser before it. It had no release date, but still...)

Anyways, heck yeah CHICKEN RUN 2!

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Other cool news this week, Annapurna Animation has upped their game. Big time. After saving the scrapped Blue Sky Studios swan song NIMONA, with much of the same crew back to complete it, they have expanded and not only kept some key people from NIMONA (like director Nick Bruno and producer Julie Zackary), but also some former Blue Sky veterans... Like none other than Chris Wedge himself! Director BUNNY, ICE AGE, ROBOTS, ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN, EPIC! The last thing he directed was a live-action movie with some VFX creatures for Paramount, called MONSTER TRUCKS... He'll be back to direct a new animated feature called FOO. It's been ten years since he directed/finished an all-animated movie, so I'm very pumped about this.

Nick Bruno has an original movie in the works there, along with more projects, so that's great. I wonder what his NIMONA and SPIES IN DISGUISE directing partner Troy Quane will be up to, then. Annapurna is also making an animated feature out of a game they released, STRAY, a tale of a stray (what else?) cat in a techy future. And that game came out rather recently, too, so it's cool to see the movie taking off this quickly. Coincidentally, Blue Sky at one point was considering adapting the creature creator game SPORE into a movie... I've never played the game, but I'm a sucker for weirdo futuristic stories and settings. NIMONA's take on a futuristic world was really cool, so Annapurna has this game down pat.

So let's see... Wedge, Bruno, Zackary... In addition to more Blue Sky alumni like Erica Pulcini, Robert Baird, and Andrew Millstein... Yeah, the spirit of Blue Sky Studios lives on at Annapurna Animation, and I think that's very nice. Annapurna took over and completed what was to be a Blue Sky feature film, and they have now landed some of the studio's key people. There's something kind of sweet about that, honestly... I wonder if this means certain canceled Blue Sky projects, such as the musical FOSTER, could live to see another day... Disney heads, namely Bob Chapek, made such an obtuse decision shuttering Blue Sky, so it's fantastic to see that NIMONA was saved by Annapurna and some of their existence as well...

#Youtube

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fallloverfic · 11 months

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Folks, Nimona is getting a single film. Just a film. Not a show. Not a series. A film. A movie. And only one of them. It'd be cool if it was getting more than that, but it's not. It has a runtime of just under 2 hours.

The Netflix YouTube teaser page even says this in the summary: from the Netflix Film "Nimona"

In the article Netflix released the day of the teaser, they have these:

"In the animated film that shares her name, the young changeling"

"share a first teaser trailer for our film"

"even more so in the movie now"

"[Nimona] reached out from the movie"

"You can catch up with Nimona when the movie hits Netflix on June 30."

In the extra footage reel on the New on Netflix video, there's a box of text on the top left corner of the Nimona footage that says "N [for Netflix] Film Nimona June 30".

For all the other general confusion I'm seeing around, I made a Tumblr post summarizing most of the stuff with the film and its history. Shorter summary of some common confusion I'm seeing:

Nimona is a webcomic (2012-2014) by Nate Diana Stevenson/ND Stevenson (he/him) that was published as a single graphic novel in 2015. While the comic was ongoing, Nate co-wrote Lumberjanes. The Nimona adaptation rights were purchased by Fox in 2015, and it was in production to become a film under Blue Sky Studios, using the Paperman (2012) art style (one of the directors, Patrick Osbourne, was animation supervisor for Paperman, and directed Feast the short film (2015), which used the same style). Disney purchased 20th Century Animation in 2019 (including Blue Sky), and work was ongoing. Disney shuttered Blue Sky and cancelled the still in production film in February 2021. The crew went searching for a new home for the film and it was picked up by Annapurna as producer, DNEG as the animation studio (using Blue Sky materials), and Netflix as distributor (they just seem to be handling distribution and marketing, not actually working on the film), which they officially announced in April 2022, for a planned 2023 release. The film also seems to have been completed sometime around February 2023. The PG-rated film premiered at the Annecy Animation International Film Festival on June 14th, 2023, and will release in select theaters on June 23rd, and be on Netflix for streaming on June 30th, 2023. There have been preview events for crew, press, and certain small organizations going back to February 2023, and at least a few people have gotten advance review copies.

Nate was also the showrunner for She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (November 13, 2018-May 15, 2020), the reboot of She-Ra: Princess of Power (1985). Again, Nimona's adaptation rights were bought by Fox in 2015, and it was being made by Blue Sky Studios. She-Ra (2018) began production in April 2016 under DreamWorks Animation and Mattel (owner of the IP), and was distributed by Netflix. 20th Century [Fox] Animation was bought by Disney in 2019. She-Ra (2018) concluded in May 2020. Nimona was cancelled by Disney in February 2021. Nimona was officially revived in April 2022, under Annapurna Animation (production), to be made/completed by DNEG (animation) and distributed by Netflix. Netflix wasn't involved on Nimona until after it was in production for around six years, around a year, minimum, after She-Ra (their last project with Nate) ended. Every other company is different and it'd be weird for them to say "you only get this if this is successful" when that makes zero sense on timing.

Lumberjanes is being adapted into an animated series on HBO Max, with Nate as executive producer. We haven't really heard anything more about it since 2020.

You can still buy and read the Nimona graphic novel in physical and ebook form, as well as the full-cast English audiobook (also available in the link). The graphic novel has been translated into 16 languages! The only thing that changed for publication was that Nate redid some of the very early pages to improve the art/panelling and make it more in line with later pages and acceptable for physical publication. That's all!

#it's never been a series #it was a film under Fox and Disney #it's always been a film under DNEG and Annapurna #please stop calling it a show #I'm now seeing multiple articles calling it a show #it's not a show #Nimona movie #Nimona film #ND Stevenson #also why it's important to use firsthand accounts rather than reposts #also deeply confused by people linking things that call it a movie and then writing in their posts it's a show

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