Amazon Commits $82 Million To Hugh Jackman Kids’ Movie

In its quest to become a Hollywood heavyweight, Amazon is trying to tick every box. The tech titan has commissioned content covering everything from fantasy to action and sci-fi. Children haven’t been forgotten and no expense has been spared.

In just over a year, Amazon MGM Studios will lift the curtain on Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie. Following in the footsteps (or, more aptly, the trotters) of the hugely-successful Babe series about an anthropomorphic piglet, Three Bags Full stars a flock of sheep who set out to solve the murder of their shepherd.

The action comedy is based on a 2005 novel which became an international bestseller and has been translated into more than 30 languages. Capitalizing on its popularity, Amazon has hired an A List cast led by Hugh Jackman who plays the ill-fated shepherd.

Jackman is joined by Emma Thompson, Patrick Stewart, Bryan Cranston and Nicholas Galitzine. They aren’t just in it for the money. The books became a success thanks to the charming story which sees the shepherd raising his sheep just for their wool and caring for them like children.

Every night he reads them a murder mystery without realizing that not only can they understand it but they argue for hours afterwards about whodunnit. Thanks to this training, the sheep instantly suspect that their master has been murdered when he is found dead under mysterious circumstances. What’s more, the furry friends think they stand a better chance of solving it than the local cop who has never cracked a serious crime in his career.

In true 80s adventure fashion they leave their meadow for the first time but soon find that the human world isn’t as simple as it seems in the mystery books.

Befitting its rural theme, the movie was filmed in the United Kingdom with principal photography taking place from June to July last year in the leafy landscape of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey. The setting included White Pond Farm whilst production primarily took place at Shepperton Studios. It shines a spotlight on the spending.

Studios filming in the U.K. get a reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country provided that at least 10% of their core costs are incurred there. In order to demonstrate this to the authorities, studios set up separate companies to produce each film in the U.K. and they are obliged to file legally-binding earnings releases.

The Amazon subsidiary behind Three Bags Full is called Grand Leo UK Productions in a nod to MGM’s roaring lion logo. The company filed its first earnings release yesterday and it revealed that the over the year to December 31, 2024, $82.1 million (£65.4 million) was spent on the production which “was in line with the budget.”

One of the biggest single costs during this time was the $4.5 million (£3.6 million) spent on staff with the company having a monthly average of 80 employees.

That doesn’t include freelancers, contractors and temporary workers as they aren’t listed as employees on the books of U.K. companies but often represent the majority of the crew on a film shoot.

That’s not the end of the story as the government reimbursement gave Amazon a helping hand. The filings reveal that the company banked a $17.8 million (£14.2 million) reimbursement bringing its net spending down to $64.3 million. However, this is set to surge in its next earnings release as it will cover the 2025 calendar year when the studio will do the bulk of the post-production work which is likely to include the creation of costly computer-animated creatures.

Believability of the effects can make the difference between success and failure but Amazon isn’t rushing it. In a sign of how seriously it is taking movie-making, the company has given itself more than two years for post production ahead of the film’s release on November 13, 2026. It shows that although Amazon is one of the world’s biggest companies, it is leaving nothing to chance.