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Hugh Jackman’s new movie, The Sheep Detectives, has an animal rights message.
The family film had its UK cinema release in May. It has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from movie-goers and critics alike, made a significant impact at the box office, and has even prompted some viewers to stop eating meat.
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The Sheep Detectives is about a vegetarian farmer (Jackman) who reads detective novels to his flock of sheep every night. When a sudden and mysterious incident interrupts life on the farm, the sheep take on the role of detectives to investigate neighbors, follow clues, and attempt to solve the mystery themselves.
While Jackman’s character is a wool farmer (learn more about the reality of the wool industry here), the film depicts his relationship with his sheep as positive and caring. In fiction, the farmer rescued one of his rams from a carnival where he was made to fight dogs, and one of his neighbors, a butcher, dislikes his meat-free lifestyle.
‘A sub-plot of how killing them is murder’
Writing in the Vegetarianism sub-Reddit, one person said that The Sheep Detectives inspired them to “stop eating meat” and become a vegetarian themselves. Meanwhile, in the Vegan sub-Reddit, a user described the “entire message” of the film as being “how smart sheep are with a sub-plot of how killing them is murder.”
The Sheep Detectives has been compared to Babe, the critically acclaimed 1995 film that prompted its lead actor, James Cromwell, to go vegan, and the classic but notoriously distressing animated adaptation of Watership Down from 1978.
The Sheep Detectives is directed by Kyle Balda, who made Despicable Me 3 and two spin-off Minions movies, and written by Craig Mazin, who is best known for creating HBO’s Chernobyl and for co-creating and co-writing The Last of Us TV show.
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The star-studded cast of ‘The Sheep Detectives’
Alongside Jackman, The Sheep Detectives stars Nicholas Galitzine (Masters of the Universe), Molly Gordon (The Bear), Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso), and Bella Ramsay (The Last of Us), along with Emma Thompson and Bryan Cranston.
The Sheep Detectives was released in May, but is still showing in select UK cinemas. It launched on Amazon Prime Video at the end of June, and will come to DVD in August.
The new film is based on the novel Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann. According to Sony, the sheep in the movie were all created digitally.
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