A new BBC adaptation of Watership Down will feature John Boyega, the actor who sprang to fame in the new Star Wars film, in an all-star cast including James McAvoy, Ben Kingsley and Gemma Arterton.

The four-part animation will give a more prominent and heroic role to the female characters in Richard Adams’s novel, which tells the story of rabbits forced to find a new home after their warren is destroyed, than in the famously blood and gore-heavy film of 1978.

Arterton will be joined by co-stars Olivia Colman and Anne-Marie Duff in what is understood to be the first animated TV drama series.

A co-production with House of Cards broadcaster Netflix and with a budget understood to be close to £20m, it is the BBC’s biggest joint venture with the US video-on-demand service to date.

Nicholas Hoult, the former Skins star who appeared in last year’s Mad Max: Fury Road, will play Fiver, the rabbit seer who is troubled by visions of impending doom, with McAvoy voicing his older brother, Hazel.

Boyega, who was praised for his role as Finn in last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, plays fellow bunny Bigwig, with Kingsley in the role of cruel General Woundwort.

Arterton, Colman, and Duff will play three of the other rabbits in the charming and occasionally brutal story of a community of rabbits in rural southern England.

Using the latest computer-generated animation techniques, the new adaptation will air next year on BBC1 in the UK and premiere on Netflix around the rest of the world.

The new adaptation is written by Tom Bidwell, who wrote E4’s Bafta-nominated My Mad Fat Diary, and directed by Noam Murro, whose previous credits include fantasy war film 300: Rise of an Empire.

Commissioned by the BBC, it is a co-production between the BBC and Netflix and will be made by independent production company 42 and Murro’s Biscuit Films.

Josh Varney, of 42, said the new adaptation would be faithful to Adams’s book and aimed at a family audience.



“Most people’s frame of reference is the movie from the late 70s but the book is a 400-page epic and we have got four hours of TV to really let the story and the characters breathe,” he told the Guardian.

“Tom Bidwell has done a brilliant job of being able to weave in more female characters, which I think the audience will find exciting. It’s about rabbits trying to find a home and within that story there are does and we wanted to amplify those roles to give more balance to the piece.”

A scene from the 1978 film version of Watership Down. Photograph: c.Everett Collection/REX

The 1978 film, which starred Richard Briers as Fiver and John Hurt as Hazel, was again the source of controversy last month when viewers complained it was too violent to be shown in the afternoon on Easter Sunday on Channel 5.

The BBC has worked with Netflix before, on shows such as BBC1 drama River, but not on this scale. It regularly collaborates with US partners on big budget drama, including BBC1’s The Night Manager, which it made with the Mad Men broadcaster, AMC.

The corporation’s then director of television, Danny Cohen, bemoaned last year that the BBC could not compete with the financial might of US on-demand rivals Netflix after it rebuffed the corporation’s attempt to co-produce its royal epic, The Crown.

Larry Tanz, vice-president of global television at Netflix, said: “We jumped at the chance to get in early and work alongside the BBC and 42 to bring this classic English tale to our members around the world.

“This novel presentation of Adams’s work pairs great talent with beautiful animation and will delight existing fans and capture a whole new audience for this timeless story.”

BBC Drama commissioning editor Matthew Read said: “Before there was Harry Potter there was Watership Down, Richard Adams’s novel is one of the most successful books of all time and one of the biggest selling books in history.

“It is fantastic to have the opportunity to bring a modern classic to a mainstream BBC1 audience with such an incredible roster of actors alongside the talented team overseeing the animation. It will unite the whole family and bring this classic story to a new generation.”