The Sheep Detectives is heading to U.S. theaters on May 8 with a domestic opening forecast of $10 million to $20 million from May 8 to May 10, a modest start for a film built around an Irish herd of sheep trying to solve the murder of their beloved shepherd.
BoxOffice Pro said that range was on the low side, pointing to Leonie Swann's 2005 best-selling novel Three Bags Full, the book on which the movie is based, as relatively unknown and Amazon MGM Studios as still fairly new to the scene. The comparison set is not small: BoxOffice Pro measured the film against Clifford the Big Red Dog, which opened to $16.6 million, and The Garfield Movie, which opened to $24 million.
The film, directed by Kyle Balda and written by Craig Mazin, had originally been titled Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie when Amazon MGM Studios picked it up in June 2024. By then, the project had already been framed as a comedy drama blending CGI and live-action, with a voice cast that includes Bryan Cranston, Patrick Stewart and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Another forecast from BoxOfficeTheory was a little tighter, putting the opening at $11 million and the domestic range at $10 million to $16 million, with a projected theatrical total of $47 million and a wider run range of $36 million to $75 million. That leaves the film with a clear test on opening weekend, because the theatrical math will need to be built well beyond the first three days if it is going to reach the upper end of those estimates.
The stakes are higher than the opening numbers alone. Forbes reported the film cost at minimum $64.3 million after a significant UK tax break, down from an original cost of around $82.1 million before the break, and said that figure is based on 2024 spending that is set to surge in the next earnings release. That next filing will cover 2025, when the studio is expected to do most of the post-production work, including costly computer-animated creatures. For comparison, Paddington in Peru cost Sony $90 million in 2024.
Momentum has not been the problem. The first official trailer arrived in December 2025 and has already drawn over 20 million views on YouTube. The report said the film's success will also depend partly on audiences in the UK and the broader European market, a reminder that the story began as a German novel before becoming an international bestseller and then a Hollywood release.
So the question is not whether The Sheep Detectives has found an audience online. It has. The question is whether those trailer views, plus support from overseas viewers, can carry a sheep-led murder mystery from curiosity to a theatrical run that starts earning back a budget already far above the size of its opening forecast.