Watership Down now rated PG after 45 years of terrifying children

The BBFC said it had reclassified Watership Down as a PG on account of its ‘mild violence, threat, brief bloody images and bad language’. Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

When Watership Down was first released in 1978, the film’s director, Martin Rosen, insisted the image featured on its promotional poster should warn viewers that this was no cutesy cartoon about some bunnies.

“I reckoned a mother with a sensitive child would see a rabbit in a snare with blood coming out its mouth and reckon, ‘Well, maybe this isn’t for Charlie – it’s a little too tough,’” he has said.