John Boyega, Nicholas Hoult, James McAvoy Join Netflix, BBC’s ‘Watership Down’

It was the film that traumatised a generation of children, with its much-loved rabbit characters slain on screen in graphic and memorable scenes.

But the story of Watership Down is to be remade for a new era, as programme-makers promise to tone down its most brutal images.

Three of the UK, brightest, leading, male actors will star in the hit, family film from Netflix.

The BBC has teamed up with Netflix for one of the most expensive mini-series ever made for the small screen, and the first animated four-part drama of its kind.

The new version stars the voices of James McAvoy and Nicholas Hoult as Hazel and Fiver, Sir Ben Kingsley as General Woundwort and Star Wars star John Boyega as Bigwig.

“While we won’t shy away from the darkness in the book, visually it won’t be as brutal and scarring.”

Rory Aitken, executive producer

The show’s executive producer told the Telegraph the 2017 version will not just tone down the levels of on-screen violence to make it more appropriate for children, but give a boost to its female characters.

Female rabbits including Clover, played by Gemma Arterton, Strawberry, played by Olivia Colman, and Hyzenthlay, played by Anne-Marie Duff, will get a dose of doe power, as it were, to allow them to display their own heroics alongside their male co-stars.

The 1978 film version of Watership Down

The cast is completed by Freddie Fox, who plays Captain Holly, and Miles Jupp as Blackberry.

Watership Down which will use computer animation to bring make the rabbits more life-like than ever, is made possible by a huge injection of cash from Netflix, which will broadcast the show worldwide after it is premiered on the BBC.

Based on the 1972 Richard Adams novel, Watership Down tells of the story of rabbits undertaking a perilous journey to find a safe home, and follows a 1978 animated film which has gone down in history for its shocking scenes of animal deaths