Hugh Jackman Unveils Sheep-Filled Footage for Detective Film ‘Three Bags Full’

The star and Emma Thompson previewed ‘Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie’ at CinemaCon, teasing the Amazon feature as “a bit of a whodunit.”

Hugh Jackman Noam Galai/Getty Images for Global Citizen

Hugh Jackman will soon be in his shepherd era.

The multi-hyphenate’s upcoming film, Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie, got a CinemaCon reveal on Wednesday night during the Amazon MGM Studios presentation inside the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Jackman and co-star Emma Thompson appeared in a video segment during the event to tease the film. “It was, as you’ll see from the clip, the most fantastic, loving, beautiful idea, this synthesis between animals and people,” she said.

Added Jackman about the film Kyle Balda directed from Craig Mazin’s script: “Craig Mazin’s wit is just second to none.”

The footage from the movie included, unsurprisingly, plenty of sheep. “The movie is a bit of a whodunit, which is always fun,” Jackman said in one behind-the-scenes clip. “The movie has such heart.”

Directed by blockbuster animation director Balda (Minions, Despicable Me 3) from a screenplay by The Last of Us guru Mazin, the story finds Jackman playing George Hardy, a shepherd who loves his sheep and raises them only for their wool. Every night he reads aloud a murder mystery, pretending his sheep can understand, but never suspecting that not only can they understand but they argue for hours afterwards about whodunnit.

When George is found dead under mysterious circumstances, the sheep realize at once that it was a murder and think they know everything about how to go about solving it. The local cop Tim Derry, played by Succession star Nicholas Braun, on the other hand, has never solved a serious crime in his life, so the sheep conclude they will have to solve it themselves, even if it means leaving their meadow for the first time and facing the fact that the human world isn’t as simple as it appears in books.

The all star cast also includes Nicholas Galitzine, Molly Gordon, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Chris O’Dowd, Regina Hall, and Patrick Stewart with Hong Chau and Thompson. The film is based on the novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, originally published in 2005.

Working Title’s Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are producing with Lindsay Doran of Three Strange Angels. Executive producers include Sarah-Jane Wright, Amelia Granger, Aditya Sood, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Tim Wellspring and Tyson Hesse.

Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie is set for release in theaters on Feb. 20, 2026.

CinemaCon, the annual gathering of cinema owners and Hollywood studios, is hosted in Las Vegas by the newly rebranded Cinema United, which for decades was known as the National Association of Theatre Owners. This year’s edition runs from March 31 to April 3.