Morgan Spurlock Super Sizes New Movie Into Chicken Restaurant
Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!, the sequel to Morgan Spurlock's groundbreaking 2004 documentary, is out today in theaters and on streaming services. As its subtitle implies, Super Size Me 2 explores the fast-food chicken industry by following Spurlock as he develops his own chicken sandwich restaurant concept, also called Holy Chicken. (No, he did not eat an unfathomable amount of fast-food chicken sandwiches.)
Of course, the film exposes the way fast food is in thrall to Big Chicken, the terrible and unethical way chickens are raised, and the price small farmers pay for not going along. Holy Chicken is an attempt to remedy the problems throughout the entire supply chain, from the raising of the chickens to the marketing and selling of the fried chicken sandwiches.
The movie ends with a pop-up version of a Holy Chicken restaurant in Ohio. Now in honor of the film's premiere, Ad Age reports, there is a pop-up in New York where chicken sandwiches sell for $9.75. (This has nothing to do with the Summer of the Chicken Sandwich, by the way; the movie was made two years ago, but delayed after Spurlock admitted to past sexual misconduct in a blog post.) Anybody can have a pop-up, but Spurlock has vowed to open a permanent brick-and-mortar chain and says he already has a commitment from investors for a Washington, DC, location, although he provided no further details.
I guess if you're going to talk about making a better fast-food chicken sandwich, you might as well go ahead and show you can do it. But it's no secret that people insist on eating what's objectively bad for them, other people, and the planet in general. We will not be saved by Morgan Spurlock, or even another chicken sandwich.