The Sheep Detectives

A 2026 animated detective story for family viewing, directed by Kyle Balda. Every evening the shepherd George Hardy read detective stories aloud to his flock. He is found dead in his pasture, and the sheep, who know how murders are solved from those very books, set out to establish what happened themselves. The investigation is led by Lily, the sharpest head in the flock. Everything is shown from their side alone. Sheep reason in their own way and grasp human arrangements poorly — property, law, kinship. Out of that mismatch grow both the comedy and the puzzle itself. The source is the novel Three Bags Full by the German writer Leonie Swann, published in 2005, where the scheme of the classical detective story was first carried into a flock of sheep. The screenplay is by Craig Mazin, known as the author of the series Chernobyl and The Last of Us. The voice cast includes Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, Bryan Cranston and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, joined by Nicholas Galitzine, Nicholas Braun, Molly Gordon, Hong Chau, Tosin Cole and Conleth Hill. The score is by Heitor Pereira. Working Title Films, Lord Miller Productions and Amazon MGM Studios produced, with Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, who stand behind Working Title Films, as producers. The film opened in cinemas on 7 May 2026 and reached other territories a day later. Critics and audiences alike took to it warmly, praising the warmth of the story and its cosy tone, behind which the film turned out to carry weighty themes. It built its box office slowly and ended up well in profit.