Watership Down is a 1978 British animated adventure-drama film, written, produced and directed by Martin Rosen and based on the 1972 novel by Richard Adams. It was financed by a consortium of British financial institutions and was distributed by Cinema International Corporation in the United Kingdom. Released on 19 October 1978, the film was an immediate success and it became the sixth-most popular film of 1979 at the UK box office.
U.S. theatrical release poster
Watership Down is an adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in Hampshire in southern England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural wild environment, with burrows, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.
First edition cover
Nuthanger Farm, Hampshire, England, in 2004
Kehaar is a black-headed gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus; pictured with summer plumage).