Sheep Detectives Writer Craig Mazin Talks Babe, The Last of Us
Craig Mazin
Gracie Newman
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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.
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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.”
Almost a decade later, someone did.
Courtenay Valenti, who is now running [Amazon] MGM, always loved it, always thought there was something valuable to the idea of a family movie that seemed like a silly talking animal movie and turns out to be much more moving. She bought it from the other studio and it went from just sort of sitting there to releasing it with the most amazing cast I think I’ll ever be associated with.
The Craig Mazin who wrote this was still very much known for writing comedy. With Chernobyl and The Last of Us, you’ve really pivoted to the death and murder guy.
Why must I go to extremes? Actually, this is the thing that came in between. I was starting to segue from one genre to another. It is funny now to talk to people where they’re like, “I don’t understand how the Chernobyl and The Last of Us guy could do this.” You know, the very first thing I ever did 30 years ago was a children’s movie [Rocket Man] at Disney. I think I’ve written in every genre. And, obviously, there’s a lot of things I write that my name is not on. But this movie is probably the nearest and dearest to my heart, because I feel like this is the one where I finally figured it out.
You have a reputation for being a really strong script doctor. So there are many, many films you’ve worked on that don’t have your name on them. Can you demystify that a bit for me, because a big part of your career has been done in the dark?
You know that there have been projects over time where a studio has gone through 30 different writers and no one, especially the studios, wants to see “written by” and then 30 names. It looks bad. It’s not good for us either. There’s a reason that we limit the credits. Most of the time when I’m doing these kinds of jobs, it’s to either help something get a green light… or it has gotten a green light and then a movie star or producer says, “Let’s bring in somebody to just help with the first act or fix this character or do a thing. I don’t do it with any expectation of credit and I quite typically don’t ask for it. They pay you pretty well and you get to work with some great people. They’re like one-night stands, creatively.
From what I’ve read and heard, you wanted to cast as wide of a net as possible with this movie. How do you do that?
Our goal was always Babe, which is what I would call the last realist talking animal movie that was special — that wasn’t just, you know, talking animals. And that’s what we aimed to do. And I remember the Babe was so surprising.