Andy Serkis Set to Direct Animal Farm
Your high school nightmares are coming back to haunt you. Andy Serkis, known best for his role as Golem/Smeagol in the Lord of the Rings franchise, has decided to bring back the George Orwell Stalinist allegory, Animal Farm, in film format.
Set to be the first production of Serkis’ own London-based studio, The Imaginarium, the upcoming film will also be his first foray into directing. Right now, he says in an interview with Hollywood Reporter, “We’re in proof-of-concept stage […] designing characters and experimenting on our stage with the designs”. There’s been no word yet on which company the film will release under, nor any word on casting and release dates – so needless to say, as Serkis did himself, the film is still very much in development infancy.
There’s no doubt that Serkis, with his experience in the motion capture world, will portray the characters of Animal Farm in a beautiful manner. Serkis has well over a decade of experience with motion capture technology, and The Imaginarium (his aforementioned production studio) specializes in motion capture movies.
Fear not, though – if the politics in Animal Farm were too heavy for you in school, Serkis also states that the film won’t delve too deep into the allegorical background of the book,
“We’re keeping it fable-istic and [aimed at] a family audience. We are not going to handle the politics in a heavy-handed fashion. It is going to be emotionally centered in a way that I don’t think has been seen before…” – Interview with Hollywood Reporter, 10/19/12
For the ones that don’t remember, Animal Farm was originally a story about a group of farm animals that plot and eventually succeed in overthrowing their human owners. Over the course of the novel, the pigs become the seemingly socialist leaders of the group and – in an M. Night Shyamalan fashioned twist – become almost human in appearance themselves by books’ end.
