THE story of two Tamworth pigs which escaped the abattoir to make a break for freedom is being turned into a £1 million BBC film.

Five years ago the nation was gripped by the saga of Butch and Sundance, the two pigs which evaded the slaughterer at Malmesbury, Wiltshire. For a week they gave the slip to teams of search parties, evading helicopters, nets, light aircraft and packs of tabloid reporters before being safely rounded up by the RSPCA and allowed to live a life of luxury in an animal sanctuary in Kent.

Their story made international headlines, and this convinced the BBC that it could be turned into a Christmas family film to follow in the footsteps of Babe, the Australian talking-pigs drama.

The Legend of the Tamworth Two will be one of the BBC’s most ambitious projects, a 90-minute film using real Tamworth pigs whose movements will be captured by computer technology and then enhanced to allow them human characteristics and voices. The special effects are being developed by Tim Haines, of Impossible Pictures, the company responsible for the groundbreaking images seen in Walking with Dinosaurs.

Lucy Davis, the daughter of the comedian Jasper Carrott who played the secretary Dawn in The Office, will voice Sundance. Ryan Cartwright, from ITV1’s The Grimleys, is set to voice Butch, although the real animal was later discovered to be a sow. The names may yet be changed as the BBC waits to discover if Butch and Sundance are copyrighted properties belonging to two previous notorious renegades whose adventures were captured in a hit film.

Frances Barber voices the pig’s mother while Brian Blessed makes an appearance as the Wild Boar, who tries to keep his young charges in order. The film, due for screening at Christmas next year, is being made for the BBC by an independent company, Box TV, from a script by Jed Mercurio, who wrote the BBC Two drama Cardiac Arrest.

Sally Woodward, executive producer for the BBC, said: “The film tells the legend of what happened when a local journalist picked up on a story and two pigs became the heroes of the world. It is also a tale of how contrary humans are in their relationship with animals — how we are only too happy to tuck into a pork chop but are outraged when people want to capture a pig that has stolen our hearts.”

Butch and Sundance will be invited to travel from their animal sanctuary in Tonbridge to attend the premier of the film. It is being made on the Isle of Wight, which is gaining an increasing reputation as a low-cost location for film productions.

The BBC hopes to sell the film to international broadcasters on the back of the pigs’ global fame. It is the corporation’s second current venture into anthropomorphic drama. A film for this Christmas, Pride, tells the story of a family of lions, using the voices of Kate Winslet, Dame Helen Mirren and Sean Bean in a story written by Simon Nye, the creator of Men Behaving Badly.

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