Andy Serkis To Direct Animal Farm

Andy Serkis has announced that he will be directing a performance-capture adaptation of the George Orwell classic, Animal Farm.

The film will be produced by Serkis’ Imaginarium Production Company along side previous collaborators, Matt Reeves (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, War for the Planet of the Apes) and Jonathan Cavendish (Breathe, Mowgli). Serkis originally acquired the rights to produce Animal Farm in 2012 for TV. Though the movie rights now have been bought by Netflix. In a statement, Serkis expressed his excitement to be working with Netflix and reunited with Matt Reeves. He called it “the very best scenario for our long-held passion to bring this fable alive.”

Animal Farm is of course an allegorical novel which was very critical of the dictatorial Russian government in 1945, when it was first published. It has returned to the public consciousness recently with many people finding links between the novel and the current Trump administration. Most recently, Stephen King used a line from the book to describe the relationship between Trump and Putin.

George Orwell on Trump and Putin, in 1945: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 19, 2018

Serkis is best known for his motion capture acting roles, playing everything from Gollum in the Lord of The Rings franchise to Supreme Leader Snoke in the Star Wars films. However, in the recent past he has been spending more time behind the camera, with his directorial debut Breathe in 2017. His next film, Mowgli was also bought by Netflix recently. It is due to be released in 2019.

It’s unclear as of yet whether the film will be getting a cinematic release or head straight to Netflix.