Andy Serkis: It's the perfect time for Animal Farm remake

12 July 2017

Andy Serkis believes there is no better time than now to remake George Orwell's political novel 'Animal Farm' for the big screen.

Andy Serkis

The 53-year-old star - who has directed a motion capture interpretation of Rudyard Kipling's 1894 tome 'The Jungle Book' for Warner Bros. Pictures - is also working on a new adaptation of the Orwell novella and insists they have a fantastic voice cast lined up to bring the farmyard characters to life.

Speaking to Den of Geek, Serkis said: "We actually started working on it before I started directing 'The Jungle Book', which is coming out next year. It's a difficult enough process to take an actor's face and put it on an ape, but actually, how do you create a non-humanoid character and anthropomorphise that to a believable degree?

"Really read the emotion and intention of the actor, like Christian Bale playing a panther, or Benedict Cumberbatch playing a tiger. Really being able to see their faces. So the same will be with 'Animal Farm'; we're going to use performance capture, we've got a great cast lined up, and we're just evolving the script. And boy, there couldn't be a better time to make 'Animal Farm'."

'Animal Farm' is an allegorical novella which reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then satirises the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union by telling the story of traditional farm animals rising up against their human masters.

Many of the animal characters represent various political figures during the time of writing and has already been adapted into an animated movie back in 1954.

Orwell's book was considered to be such a powerful satire of the Soviet Union it was placed on the list of forbidden books until the end of communist rule in 1989.

Serkis is considered to be the pioneer of motion capture performance and he has received critical acclaim for his portrayals of Gollum in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and chimpanzee Caesar in the 'Planet of the Apes' franchise.

He created his own motion capture workshop, The Imaginarium Studios, in London, where 'Animal Farm' will be filmed.

In Serkis' adaptation of 'The Jungle Book', Bale plays black panther Bagheera, Cate Blanchett stars as anaconda Kaa and Cumberbatch is the villainous tiger Shere Khan, while Mowgli will be played by Rohan Chand and will hit cinemas in October 2018.

'Animal Farm' has not yet been given a release date.