UK | France | USA 2026
Opening October 1, 2026

Directed by: Steve Cox, Matthew Walker
Writing credits: Mark Burton, Giles Pilbrow
Principal actors:  Animation: Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Nina Sosanya 

Shaun the Sheep is back, as clever as ever, to right all the wrongs, and to fix up the blunders and messes created by the Farmer in Mossy Bottom Farm. The animals are preparing for Halloween, and the lovingly hand-tended pumpkins still growing in their secret pumpkin patch are accidentally smashed to bits by the clumsy, balding, big-footed Farmer. How can Halloween be saved? Shaun to the rescue, well sort of. He discovers a tossed aside children’s book Home-Mad(e) Science brimming with experiments; he concocts a serum that turns the tiny, rescued pumpkins seeds into supernaturally growing pumpkins…overnight. So, the Halloween Hoedown is still on. In the meantime, the Farmer, unconcerned about the demolished pumpkin patch, has only one thing on his mind—a romantic date with the newly-arrived town veterinarian. They have a thing for each other, but both are too shy to act. The Farmer, trying to spiff himself up to ask her out on a date to a local dance, inadvertently dabs a bit of the Shaun’s serum on his thinning hair expecting a tiny miracle. This serum doesn’t do “tiny.” Not even Shaun could have foreseen what would happen next—overnight there is a wild beast, a Bigfoot look-alike, on the prowl frightening the townsfolk. And the Farmer is nowhere to be found.

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is the third feature-length film in the franchise. It is, in effect, a silent movie; sitting in the audience you barely even notice there is no dialogue. The characters communicate with grunts and bleats (the sheep) and humming and perhaps an occasional unintelligible word. What makes it work is slapstick humor and timing, combined with the characters’ facial expressions and movements. It goes from one silly joke to the next even sillier joke, and the plot becomes almost irrelevant. The film has quite a few “Easter eggs” for the adult audience to discover. Two not very subtle ones are: Shaun’s mad science scene is reminiscent of Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931). The dancing sheep number brings back the elegantly sinister moves from Michael Jackson's “Thriller” video from 1983.

The charm of the Shaun films and 190 TV episodes comes from the use of handcrafted stop-motion animation. The characters are handmade puppets, and there is frame-by-frame shooting in which each puppet is physically moved a millimeter at a time, taking a photograph after each movement, and then merging twenty-four frames into one second of film. There are real miniature sets built physically by hand in the studio. At Aardman Animations there is a deep commitment to traditional stop-motion animation. They revealed they do incorporate some computer-generated-imagery (CGI), but only minimally to add minor background elements that are hard to do practically, such as wide-open skies.

A silent movie needs a superb soundtrack. This is provided by Emmy Award nominee Natalie Holt and includes twenty-nine songs. The iconic theme song for all Shaun productions, “Life’s a Treat,” has been reworked to a spookier Halloween Mix version. It is performed by the track's original creators, Mark Thomas and Vic Reeves, alongside Rizzle Kicks, the British hip-hop duo. While the core score remains, regional versions may have added songs. In Germany, rap singer Thomas D composed and sings the catchy tune “Wir schaffen das Shaun” (“We Can Do It, Shaun”) which slides effortlessly into the soundtrack as though it were there from the beginning.

Halloween is for trick-or-treating, this film is a real treat! (Pat F)