With this passion project, screenwriter-producer-director Martin Rosen brilliantly achieved what was thought difficult, if not impossible: a faithful big-screen adaptation of Richard Adams’s classic British dystopian novel about a community of rabbits seeking safety and happiness after their warren comes under terrible threat.

With its naturalistic hand-drawn animation, dreamily expressionistic touches, gorgeously bucolic background design, and elegant voice work from such superb English actors as John Hurt (The Elephant Man), Ralph Richardson (The Fallen Idol), Richard Briers (Much Ado About Nothing), and Denholm Elliott (Raiders of the Lost Ark), Watership Down is an emotionally arresting, dark-toned allegory about freedom amid political turmoil.

Additional Features

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray

• New interview with director Martin Rosen

• New appreciation of the film by director Guillermo del Toro

• Picture-in-picture storyboard for the entire film

• Defining a Style, a 2008 featurette about the film’s aesthetic

• Trailer

• PLUS: An essay by comic book writer Gerard Jones