Zachary Levi felt "honoured" to be replacing Mel Gibson in 'Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget'.
Zachary Levi was honoured to take on the role originally voiced by Mel Gibson in the sequel to the 2000 animation
The 43-year-old actor voices the role of rooster Rocky in the sequel to the 2000 stop-motion hit and was such a fan of the film to begin with that he was "beyond honoured" to learn he would be playing the character originally voiced by 'Braveheart' star Mel.
He told ScreenRant: "Oh, super cool. It's an honor, man, I was a huge fan of the first film, legitimately still quote it to this day. Love what Aardman does as a studio for all these many, many years. So, when I found out they were making a sequel to 'Chicken Run', I was already stoked, and then I found out that they wanted me to reprise the role. I was beyond honored, because Mel crushed it in the first one, and it's just a really fun role.
"He's the only American in this whole big group of all these wonderful British actors, and voices, and characters.
"And in this film, it's the continuation of showing this kind of soft underbelly of Rocky, which comes out in him now being this girl dad, and having this love and doting on her, and then ultimately being willing to sacrifice his life to go save her. So, it's a really cool adventure.
The 'Chuck' star went on to explain that because none of the animation was done when he started working on the movie, he had to use his "imagination" to bring his character to life through his voice.
He said: "They animate to your voice, so for the first few sessions, you know, big sessions, there wasn't really anything, maybe some storyboards or some rough animatics or something. So yeah, you're just going to build a performance really based on your own imagination, and what Sam [Fell], our director, was kind of guiding me through.
"Then later on, you come back and do some pickup sessions, and now they've done some animation, so you get to see a little bit of that. I'm not watching it going, "Oh, wow, we were totally off," [chuckles], but it is fun to just kind of see it slowly come together, and then ultimately, become the full finished product that it is, which is wonderful."
'Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget' will be available to stream on Netflix from December 15.
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