Craig Mazin says he knows what you’re thinking: “The Chernobyl and The Last of Us guy wrote a broad comedy mystery about talking farm animals? OK.” Well, Mazin’s comedy roots run deep. Also, we contain multitudes.
The Sheep Detectives, Mazin’s adaptation of Leonie Swann’s Three Bags Full, has been a passion project of his for the better part of two decades. And now that results are finally out in theaters — the feature includes an impressive cast on-camera (Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, Hong Chau) and voicing sheep (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brett Goldstein, Regina Hall) — he seems a little nostalgic. “I feel like this is the one where I finally figured it out,” he says.
During a recent episode of The Hollywood Reporter podcast I’m Having an Episode (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple), Mazin spoke about taking inspiration from Babe, script doctoring, his love of competence porn and why he believes the upcoming third season of The Last of Us will have its viewers reexamining their previous takes on the show.
You wrote the original The Sheep Detectives script 10 years ago. How much does a project change in a decade? And are there points where you think, “Why am I still working on this?”
This one took, weirdly, even longer. I first got the book from our producer, Lindsay Doran, 19 years ago. It took her nine to unwind the rights. Then set it up at a studio and I wrote a script about 10 years ago. That script is basically the movie. I’ve done a little bit of revising, not much. But the studio was like, “This isn’t just a purely goofy movie. There’s like there’s a lot more going on here. And we’re not really sure we want to be in that business.”
