Black Sheep

There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand... and they're pissed off!

– The movie's tagline

...a lively affair, extremely violent, full of black humour and what might be called shear terror.

– English critic Philip French, The Observer, 14 October 2007

Living in the past. That's what's wrong with these bloody farmers.

– Angus Oldfield (Peter Feeney) to his brother Henry (Nathan Meister)

I just found it hysterical. It played to so much about my own childhood, and fears about these crazy creatures, and growing up in the rural parts of New Zealand. It just made sense; it felt to me as though it would be a fun thing to do.

– Richard Taylor on reading the script for Black Sheep

...practical effects were going to be a much better way to do the film. It means that everything is actually happening in front of the camera, on screen, interacting with the actors on set. And we've got puppets, animatronics, makeups and live animals of course, and I think it's made a much much better film, because its really tapping into that old-fashioned kind of way of doing effects, where you're bring suspension of disbelief, but you're also buying into the whole experience of the movie... 

– Director Jonathan King on using physical effects instead of digital effects

I mean it's a very universal story  . . .  it's a story about sibling rivalry and inheritance  . . .  and for our lead character Henry, it's a coming of age story. He's been traumatised in childhood. He comes back to the place where the trauma happened...

– Producer Philippa Campbell

...we showed Richard Taylor the script, and he really enjoyed it. He laughed, and said 'great, we want to be part of this' which was an amazsing thing for us. It was a huge leap of faith on their part, and you know I felt very privileged to have them involved. They were shooting King Kong at the time I think, incredibly busy...

– Writer/director Jonathan King on the participation of Wētā Workshop and Richard Taylor

No animals were harmed in the making of this film.

– A line from the closing credits

[Peter] Feeney as the square-jawed Angus is a perfect blend of mad scientist and Kiwi landed gentry who bravely suffers a scene which has him involved in the film's greatest indignity. And surely it's a sign of national maturity to have us telling sheep jokes against ourselves and selling them to the world. Black Sheep won't be to everyone's bad taste. But it's got plenty of it to keep us chuckling until that next Sunday roast.

– Russell Baillie in a four star review, The NZ Herald, 29 March 2007

...in retrospect, it came together quite straightforwardly, and a big part of that is thanks to the New Zealand Film Commission — our public funding body. They invested in probably 60-odd percent of the film and then we presold it to Icon for Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and their support was really, really crucial. In the end, a Korean company who was involved in what Wētā were doing put up the rest. You do end up kind of patching it together from unlikely places, but people always kind of got that there was a movie there and there was a market for it.

– Writer/director Jonathan King on how Black Sheep was funded, IGN website, 15 May 2012

..in terms of investor confidence Wētā was crucial — we were really able to trade on the kudos they brought with them. And it boosted our confidence going into the film too . . . They'd been making these films with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars, and then came and worked so hard on our film for just a fraction of that.

– Director Jonathan King on the contributions of company Wētā Workshop, Onfilm, March 2007, page 29 (Volume 24, no 3)

Turning a notoriously docile, none-too-intelligent species into a source of menace is an impressive, if improbable, feat of filmmaking . . . Once you have seen a sheep munching on a bloody human leg, you may think twice about your next leg of lamb.

– Veteran American reviewer AO Scott, The New York Times, 22 June 2007

...Black Sheep also looks spectacular. Swarms of hellish sheep pour over the beautifully rolling NZ countryside, a ridiculous but somehow perfect embodiment of the unease in the landscape seen in so many of the film’s cinematic forebears. King pays homage to films from beyond our shores as well, with any number of zombie films all getting a nod . . . a great NZ gross-out horror-comedy, following a long tradition in this country and abroad. In-jokes and references abound, yet the core idea is so uniquely silly that the film stands on its own. Black Sheep remains Jonathan King’s most wholly satisfying film, touching on the cinema of unease, splatter, and more NZ-relevant issues than we’d care to count.

– Website Cinema Aotearoa

The Midnight Madness series here was always the international destination we were aiming for — just because it is the only genre section in any 'A' festival in the world. . . . We only completed it last Monday, so it was very down to the wire . . . We had to send work in progress, but they gave us as much leeway as possible so we had enough time to give them something as far down the track creatively as possible....

– Producer Philippa Campbell on Black Sheep debuting at the Toronto Film Festival, Onfilm, March 2007, page 29 (Volume 24, no 3)

...this is a very easy sell. I'll never have as much fun again in pitching a film . . . It is a naughty film, it's a retelling of the Kiwi identity story in a way that invites us to laugh at ourselves.

– Producer Philippa Campbell on finding funding for Black Sheep, Onfilm, March 2007, page 29 (Volume 24, no 3)