Li Weijie, his wife Ayu and their two daughters Pingping and An-an, are a Chinese family living in northern Thailand since last 17 years. Weijie run an internet service providing shop and is a film enthusiast who likes to watch detective films and has deep knowledge on the subject. They come from a middle-class family. One day, Pingping was keen to attend a summer camp and at the camp she met suchat, the son of a political candidate and police chief. At the summer camp, Pingping was violated by suchat and he then recorded the videos of him performing obscene acts in order to manipulate Pingping. Suchat had arranged for pingping to meet him at the family warehouse around 10pm, but upon reaching the warehouse he noticed that Ayu was there to intervene for pingping. Ayu and suchat had a scuffle and pingping accidentally killed suchat by hitting him with a spade. After being lost and confused in the pouring rain, Ayu and ping ping decided to bury the body and informed Weijie about the incident. Weijie was planning to shield his family from police conviction and in turn, he had to create an alibi for his whole family and train them to intensely to fabricate a perfect story coupled with convincing alibi. The story involved them going to watch a boxing match at hua lamphong in thailand on the 2nd and the 3rd of which weijie carefully orchestrated the time frame as well as training his family members to remember some key details.
In September 2017, it was announced that an undisclosed Chinese production company bought the remake rights of the Indian Malayalam-language film Drishyam. Chen Sicheng was the executive producer of and the film was his debut production.
Release
Sheep Without a Shepherd was released in China on 13 December 2019. It was also released in IMAX format.
Box office
Sheep Without a Shepherd took the top spot at Mainland China box office, becoming the highest-grossing film in its opening weekend. In that weekend, 13 – 15 December, it grossed $32,152,680 in China, besting Skyfire. The film continued the lead inChinese box office into its second week, till 20 December. In its second weekend in China, the film earned $23,204,410, beating ' which debuted that weekend and ranked second behind '. The film's cumulative gross in China stood at $76,813,388 till 22 December. In the same weekend, in terms of worldwide box office ranking, it came fifth behind Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, , Ip Man 4: The Finale, and Frozen 2, with $77,439,509. In three weeks, the film grossed $111,225,633 and $135,589,251 in four weeks. By 13 January 2020, the film earned $154.24 million from box office sales in China alone. As of 12 February, it has grossed 176 million from China. It is currently the 10th highest-grossing film in China in 2019.
Awards
It was nominated at The 6th Douban Film Annual Awards in the category Top Rated Chinese Movie.
