Hugh Jackman's New Whodunit 'The Sheep Detectives' Is a Near-Perfect 2026 Surprise | Review

1 week ago 12

Hugh Jackman petting a sheep in The Sheep Detectives

Published Apr 27, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT

Tania Hussain is an Executive Editor at Collider responsible for creative, editorial, and managerial duties. In addition to leading content ideation and development, she works to generate innovative and compelling ideas for feature articles and reviews with her editorial team across Features, Resources, Lists, and News. She has helped cover and ideate content for major events for Collider, including the Toronto International Film Festival. Tania has also conducted more than 100 interviews since her start in the business almost 16 years ago. Some favorites include Joel McHale, Charlie Cox, John Krasinski, Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Bob Odenkirk, Sophia Bush, Andy Richter, Jordan Schlansky, Jamie Dornan, Yeardley Smith, Arielle Vandenberg, and a reasonable toss-up between Cookie Monster and Kermit the Frog.

Following the blockbuster success of Project Hail Mary, Amazon MGM Studios has another potential crowd-pleaser on its hands with The Sheep Detectives — a film that could stand out among the best films of 2026. And yes, a movie about sheep trying to solve the murder of their shepherd, George (Hugh Jackman), might sound tonally mismatched for the studio’s core audience, but I assure you it’s far from some one-joke premise. It is silly, but only in parts, and that’s why it works as well as it does. Kyle Balda’s directorial feature, executive produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, is not just riding the waves of a cute idea. It has that cozy Paddington warmth on the surface, but underneath all the wool and whodunit fun, there’s a surprisingly tender story about loss, loneliness, and found family.

Having watched The Sheep Detectives in a theater full of critics this past April, what stood out most was how little it felt like a movie trying to win people over by force. The jokes are sharp, but not desperate; the emotional moments are sweet, but not syrupy, and the message is one that really sticks hard. Craig Mazin’s script, adapted from Leonie Swann’s international bestseller Three Bags Full, makes its own path with the story, but keeps the mystery clean and easy to follow. It could have been a much goofier and sappier film, but instead, The Sheep Detectives feels like one of spring’s first real and best surprises.

What Is 'The Sheep Detectives' About?

Following the very quiet and lonely existence of a shepherd named George (Jackman), he lives on a quiet farm and spends his nights reading detective novels out loud to his sheep. While he often thinks they’re just standing there, chewing and listening to nonsense, they’re actually all very present and paying close attention — especially Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a golden-haired sheep who hangs on every word of George’s. But as she and the others all follow along, they just don’t understand humans and their world as much as they think they do from those mystery novels.

Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

FIND YOUR FILM →

What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.

ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.

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Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?

AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.

AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.

NEXT QUESTION →

What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?

AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?

AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.

NEXT QUESTION →

Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.

AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.

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What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.

AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.

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What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.

ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.

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How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.

AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.

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What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?

AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.

REVEAL MY FILM →

The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.

Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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That becomes their first big obstacle when George is found dead. His flock doesn’t really understand what death means at first and believes it only happens in stories (because, as Lily points out, everyone who dies becomes a cloud, like her parents). But that is, until Mopple (voiced by Chris O’Dowd), the flock’s patient soul who remembers what the others often choose to forget, has to explain. With Lily offering to solve the crime and find out who murdered their shepherd (as she always figured it out from the books George read), she teams up with Mopple and Sebastian, a dark Winter Lamb (voiced by Bryan Cranston), who has been exiled from flocks and is now more guarded. As a bigger mystery, he was also present on George’s final night, which gives the mystery an extra pull.

From there, The Sheep Detectives expands into a proper small-town whodunit that feels like Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery at one point. The humans around George all seem to have their own reasons to hide something, including his estranged daughter, Rebecca Hampstead (Molly Gordon), the butcher Ham Gilyard (Conleth Hill), neighboring farmer Caleb Merrow (Tosin Cole), Reverend Hillcoate (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith), and innkeeper Beth Pennock (Hong Chau). And then there is Lydia Harbottle (Emma Thompson), George’s lawyer, who arrives to read George’s will and quickly realizes this town has a lot more going on than expected. But outside Lydia and that bubble of suspects is intrepid reporter Elliot Matthews (Nicholas Galitzine), who sees George’s death as the story that might finally get him somewhere, and the bumbling Inspector Clouseau-adajcent, Officer Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun), who is not only scared of his own taser at one point in the film, but the type of character you root for as he’s trying very hard to prove he can handle a real murder case — and gets some pointers from the sheep, most hilariously.

While Derry’s own investigation sometimes starts to resemble Charlie Day’s Pepe Silvia conspiracy board in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the sheep are working through the case in their own strange, oddly useful way and growing up outside the farm. With them watching from the sidelines, helping Derry and getting to know the townsfolk as they stumble upon their own secrets, The Sheep Detectives becomes a sweet, strange little mystery about who George really was and why he mattered so much to the town, even if some of them can’t outright admit it.

'The Sheep Detectives' Cast Brings Both Warmth and Weight to Amazon MGM's Charming Movie

Even though Jackman isn’t in The Sheep Detectives for long, he does a lot of heavy lifting as George. In the first 20 minutes or so, you understand pretty quickly why everyone revolves around him, and that’s not easy to pull off when an entire story hinges on its main character’s absence. Of course, Jackman brings a quiet warmth to how he plays George, especially in scenes with his flock that really heighten their loss. It’s enough to make you care, but also enough to leave you wondering who he was with humans — and we see that in his brief interactions, which point to him being a curmudgeon and a very elusive individual.

Paddington Bear going down a set of electrical stairs at the London tube in the film Paddington

But naturally, the real magic comes from the sheep, and a lot of that is thanks to the voice cast. Louis-Dreyfus brings a natural confidence to Lily, even though some of her weightiest moments revolve around her pain and hurt over George’s death and bringing his killer to justice. Between a peppy voice of excitement and sounding scared or heartbroken, it’s that inflection and tone in her voice that really make Lily so relatable. O’Dowd is just as strong as Mopple, giving him a soft, weary voice that makes every line feel like it is coming from someone who has remembered too much for too long. Meanwhile, Cranston’s Sebastian adds a real gravity to the film with this low, matter-of-fact edge that makes him feel guarded without making him cold. But even with broader sheep, like Regina Hall’s Cloud and Brett Goldstein’s Ronnie and Reggie, the voices never feel random or tossed in for laughs. Hall is very funny with a self-satisfied certainty in her tone, while Goldstein brings a scrappy, brotherly chaos that makes their banter feel alive. Patrick Stewart is also a treat as Sir Ritchfield, using that grand, dignified voice of his to make even the silliest sheep lines sound weirdly important.

And finally, on the human side, Braun is a real standout as Officer Derry, playing him with a kind of Jimmy Stewart meets Peter Sellers charm. He could have easily played the cop as a joke and let the slapstick humor lead his performance, but Braun finds something more grounded in him, which makes that arc land in a much more satisfying way. Galitzine works most impressively opposite him as Elliot, a reporter whose energy plays well against Derry’s nerves and gives their scenes a nice buddy-comedy rhythm. Meanwhile, Gordon brings a soft bit of mystery and restraint to Rebecca that keeps you guessing till the very end. But it’s Thompson, as always, who comes in with complete control of her role as the big city lawyer, giving the film a slightly sharper edge whenever she’s on screen. Finally, actors Chau and Hill round things out in ways that serve the story without overcomplicating it.

'The Sheep Detective's Writing Balances Mystery, Humor, and Heart Without Overdoing It

On top of standout performances, The Sheep Detectives works so well because of Mazin’s script, which keeps everything surprisingly clean and focused. Sharp and easy to follow, it never feels like the film is trying too hard to be clever or outsmart its audience. Unfolding at a steady pace, the film gives the sheep and humans room to move without stepping on each other. But it’s the way they are carefully woven in together that creates a nice rhythm where humor lands naturally, emotional beats aren’t forced, and nothing ever feels like filler.

This kind of balance is especially impressive when you consider how much the film changes from its source material. Swann’s book leans more into the sheep’s perspective and gets much darker in tone (we really mean it…), but the film opens things up in a way that feels more complete without losing what made the original idea work. Sure, it still has that slightly odd, playful edge, but it’s more grounded than the concept itself as it leans on relationships and emotional fallout to tell a sweet, tender story about family and loneliness. If there is one odd thing the film mostly brushes past, it’s why Officer Derry seems to be the only cop handling a murder in this small town. Braun is so good that it’s easy to roll with it, but it’s a detail that makes you pause for half a second.

As one of the year’s most delightful surprises, The Sheep Detectives is a charming, smart, and sincerely heartfelt whodunit that proves even the smallest voices can carry the biggest stories. But best of all, it’s also the kind of film you don’t expect to love this much and one you won’t forget anytime soon!

The Sheep Detectives is in theaters May 8.

Release Date May 8, 2026

Runtime 109 Minutes

Director Kyle Balda

Writers Craig Mazin, Leonie Swann

Producers Eric Fellner, Lindsay Doran, Tim Bevan

Pros & Cons

Craig Mazin's script keeps the mystery sharp, the humor natural, and the emotional beats grounded without overdoing any of it.
The humor lands naturally and never feels desperate or overly childish.
The voice cast, especially Julia Louis-Dreyfus, gives the sheep real emotional depth and makes them feel surprisingly human.