Actor/director Andy Serkis has revealed that his next film will be an adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Serkis is promoting his latest directorial effort, the sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which releases this week. Serkis is best known for his work in mo-cap and voice work, particularly as Gollum in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and as Caesar in the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy. Serkis has also appeared in numerous other roles since his career kicked off in the '80s, and recently appeared as Snoke in the newest Star Wars trilogy.
Serkis began his directing career with 2017's Breathe starring Andrew Garfield and then tackled his darker take on Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" with Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, which debuted on Netflix. Serkis took on Venom: Let There Be Carnage after original director Ruben Fleischer decided not to return to direct the sequel and recently wrapped his portrayal of Alfred Pennyworth in 2022's The Batman with Robert Pattinson. Now, Serkis is lining up his next directorial project as he also prepares to star in the Luther movie with Idris Elba.
In an interview with Wired, Serkis revealed that his next directorial effort will be an adaptation of the classic George Orwell novel, Animal Farm. Animal Farm is an anthropomorphic political cautionary tale about a group of farm animals who rebel against their human owner in order to create a free and fair society, which eventually falls apart and turns into a dictatorship. The story was originally published in 1945 and has been adapted in numerous incarnations throughout the years, including a popular animated film in 1954. A live-action version was made in 1999 by Hallmark, which starred the voices of Kelsey Grammar, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Ian Holm. Read Serkis' quote on the upcoming adaptation below:
"I've got a whole bunch of movies that are kind of in development, but what comes up, likely, [will be] Animal Farm, I think is probably the next thing that I'm doing. George Orwell's Animal Farm. That is actually currently in the early works of being developed into a movie."
Animal Farm has been adapted beyond film, taking shape on stage, radio, comic strips, and even video games, as well as being frequently read as part of school curriculums. The political undertones and use of satire make it a popular novel, much like Orwell's other seminal and oft-quoted work, 1984, which has also had it's share of adaptations and translations, continuing to reverberate in society to this day. Orwell's inspiration for Animal Farm's premise was the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then onto the Stalin-era, which ushered in the Communist dictatorship of that region until 1991.
It's unknown how Serkis will adapt Animal Farm in terms of mo-cap or some other type of performance capture, but if anyone can do it and do it well, it's Serkis. The filmmaker has shown his skills for creating unique and memorable digital mo-cap characters throughout his career and feels like the perfect fit to adapt something like Animal Farm for modern audiences. With political theater playing heavily throughout the news cycle each day, Animal Farm also feels like a timely topic to adapt today, although the argument could be made that it's essentially an evergreen topic. At any rate, Serkis' involvement in the project definitely raises it above a Hallmark adaptation or an old animated take, as his skill set for a project like this is perfectly suited.
Source: Wired
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