Andy Serkis recently discussed the decade-long journey to bring an animated adaptation of George Orwell’s allegorical novel, Animal Farm, to the big screen and how he’s updating the story for the modern era, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Following a group of barnyard animals that overthrow their human owner to create a better society for themselves, only for it to devolve into a dictatorship run by a pig named Napoleon, Serkis’s version debuted this week at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France.
Speaking before the screening, Serkis commented on the long road it took to get the project into production, saying,
It’s been an incredibly challenging conundrum with many twists and turns along the way.
A fan of the book since he was a preteen, the actor-director’s inspiration for the adaptation came when, during the filming of The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, he realized a representation of the story had not been made in many years.
Working with collaborator Jonathan Cavendish, the pair created the production company, The Imaginarium, with initial plans to make Animal Farm its first project as a mix of live-action and motion capture CGI. Several years and films later, it would evolve into a fully animated production.
Serkis noted,
We…did a lot of experimenting, which led us to realize that animation was the right medium for this adaptation. That allowed us to…say much more than live action would allow us to do.
Despite attempts to shop the film around to the studios, it wasn’t until The Imaginarium partnered with U.K. companies Cinesite and Aniventure that it was picked up by Netflix, which had previously dropped it.
When it came to updating the story of Animal Farm, an allegory for the rise of Soviet Russia, to the modern day for a family-friendly audience, Serkis said,
Family films tend to either be patronizing to children or feel like they have to satisfy the adults…Orwell wanted to write for young, inquiring minds who had to make tough decisions, and that guided us for this adaptation.
When asked about references and similarities to contemporary figures and events in the adaptation, Serkis replied,
We started years before some of these events occurred…there are enough despots around the world using the same divisive techniques…to control people.
Animal Farm is still searching for a distributor as of this writing.
Leave a Comment