Shaun of the city

Shaun the Sheep Movie, adapted from a popular British animated TV series, will be screened on the Chinese mainland this weekend.[Photo provided to China Daily]

China prepares to watch a movie on the sheep's adventures, and not on a farm this time, Xu Fan reports.

Based on the popular British animated TV series about Shaun, a relatively small yet smart sheep, Shaun the Sheep Movie will hit Chinese mainland theaters on Friday.

It was released in the United Kingdom in February.

Richard Starzak and Mark Burton, the directors of the movie, say they are impressed with the series' popularity in China, adding jokingly that they will consider making a sequel titled "Shaun the Panda" for the world's second-largest movie market after the United States.

Shaun first appeared in A Close Shave (1995), an Oscar-winning short film, and gained his status as the protagonist of a four-season animated series, produced by Bristol-based Aardman Animations.

The TV series was aired by BBC in 2007 and has been viewed in around 140 countries since then.

China introduced the dialogue-free, clay animation series in 2012, and now all the episodes can be watched for free on several major video-streaming websites, such as iQiyi and Letv.

Figures from the sites show that most of the episodes have been watched more than one million times in the country.