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.

Fiver and Hazel manage to escape with six other rabbits named Bigwig (an Owsla officer who deserts), Blackberry, Pipkin, Dandelion, Silver, and Violet.

Later, they are found by Captain Holly, who recounts the destruction of Sandleford by humans as well as an encounter with vicious rabbits called the "Efrafans".

That night, the rabbits return to Nuthanger Farm to attempt to free the does, but Hazel's is shot in the leg and the rest are forced to retreat.

Kehaar returns and, while pecking out buckshot from Hazel's leg with his beak, reports of the many does at the overcrowded Efrafa warren.

While the Watership rabbits barricade their warren, Fiver slips into a trance, in which he envisions a dog named Bob running loose in the woods.

His mumblings give Hazel an idea; he chews through the Nuthanger Farm watchdog's leash, and Blackberry, Dandelion, and Hyzenthlay bait the dog into following them to the warren.

Several years later, an elderly Hazel is visited by the Black Rabbit, who invites him to join his own Owsla, assuring him of Watership Down's perpetual safety.

[citation needed] The backgrounds and locations, especially Efrafa and the nearby railway, are based on the diagrams and maps in Richard Adams's original novel.

According to financier Jake Eberts, the investors who put up the $50,000 development finance "got their money back with interest, plus an additional $450,000, making a total of ten times their investment".

Its critical consensus reads, "Aimed at adults perhaps more than children, this is a respectful, beautifully animated adaptation of Richard Adams' beloved book.

However, Ebert felt that the realism of the story, which he liked, did not match with the style of animation which he described as "soft-edged, cuddly and like a cartoon'.

[20] Some critics commented on the film's success as an adaptation, such as The Observer's Philip French, who wrote that "the novel's texture isn't there and the characters never take on strong pictorial identities".

[22] The Globe and Mail's Jay Scott, on the other hand, described the animation backgrounds of the film as "second-rate shopping mall watercolor landscapes" but praised the film's allegorical aspects (drawing comparisons between the villain General Woundwort and Adolf Hitler), the realistic and compassionate approach to its rabbit characters, and the voice cast.

[23] The Daily Mail's Margaret Hinxman also praised the voice acting, the "delicious" music, and called the background landscapes "superb", but concluded that "Watership Down is by no stretch of the imagination a Disney-type animation feature film.

The Guardian's Derek Malcolm also complimented Kehaar the seagull's "most Disney-like" animation style even though he found the film as a whole to be "old-fashioned" and the song "Bright Eyes" to be "more than a trifle bland".

[26] In a joint review of Watership Down and Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings, animation historian Michael Barrier described both films as "very stupid movies, of a special kind" and that "the films themselves show no sign that any intelligence was at work in making them" due to their "grim literalism" in adapting their source texts.

He did describe Watership Down as the "least offensive" of the two but nevertheless characterised the animation style as "graceless" and expressed disappointment that the vision of the film's original director John Hubley was never fully realised.

[27] Newsweek's David Ansen also drew comparisons with The Lord of the Rings, but while he disliked Bakshi's film he was more effusive about Watership Down, which he said "has the relentless momentum of a good war movie" and "is swift of foot, graced with wit, and capable of touching the hearts of both children and adults".

"[29] Watership Down has developed a reputation as a distressing children's text, with Ed Power of The Independent describing the film in a 40th anniversary retrospective as a "classic" but which "arguably traumatised an entire generation".

[30] In 2016, British broadcaster Channel 5 faced criticism after broadcasting the film in a pre-watershed slot on Easter Sunday, which was seen to be in poor taste due to the film's representations of violence inflicted upon rabbits, and with many on social media expressing concern about child viewers being distressed (though it is unclear whether any children were actually negatively affected).

[32] Despite the film's reputation as traumatising, initial regulators and critics expressed little concern about the potentially negative effects on children.

[35] Like the BBFC, critics during initial release characterised Watership Down as suitable for children in spite of its potentially distressing aspects.

[36] Scott in The Globe and Mail wrote that "Parents are more apt to feel squeamish about this than their children: there is nothing as devastating as the death of Bambi's mother.

[37] Gerard Jones, in his essay for The Criterion Collection, admits that the film "has troubled me ever since I first saw it" at the age of twenty-one, but that he believes it is an important film for viewers of all ages because it "asks us to spend time with those elements of existence that we will always find most troubling (and haunting and moving), and that we so rarely allow our children's culture or our own entertainment to dwell on."

The contents include film stills linked with a combination of narration and extracts from the script, as well as a preface by Adams and a foreword by Rosen.