Andy Serkis has been wanted to make “Animal Farm” since he first read the book on a school bus a kid. Now, after its premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, he has realized his dream. But unlike he initially intended way back in 2012 when the adaptation was announced, the movie is animated and not motion capture.
“By definition, doing it as a live-action movie would have made it bleaker from the outset, darker, and the character designs that we were working on in the way that we were doing it was too heavy handed,” Serkis told The Wrap. “What the animated world gives you, which I’ve realized, is an innocence and a way of storytelling which allows the audience to connect and fill in the dots in a much more profound way. You can still have characters that are as meaningful and emotionally engaging, but you’re freed of reality to certain extent. And therefore you can retain innocence.”
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The most recent filmed version of “Animal Farm,” the George Orwell novella in which farm animals rise up against the human farmer who owns them, was a live action 1999 television film that matched the voices of Kelsey Grammar, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart, and Paul Scofield, among others, to real-life pigs, chickens, dogs, and horses. A previous animated version was released in 1954, partially funded by the CIA in an anti-communism effort. The explicit political overtones of the novel, originally meant to reflect the Soviet Union, lent itself to the U.S.’s then-objectives.
In the 21st century, the politics of the novel hit different, and that scared a lot of potential producers. Serkis said several studios rejected the project, telling him, “No, it’s too all too message-y, too political, too spinach-y.” The project eventually landed at Cinesite Studios in 2022. His aim, though, was to “tell that in an innocent and comedic and funny and heartwarming way, but most importantly, where you do deeply care about the characters and what happens to them.”
“We live in a difficult world, but every generation lives in a difficult world for different reasons, and we always make the same mistakes,” Serkis said. As far as its connections to the current political landscape, though, he said, “There’s nothing in our film which is specifically drawing comparison with any political party, regime or person, because we started making this 14 years ago.”
Serkis also told Variety that the movie — which includes voice talent Seth Rogen, Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin, and Steve Buscemi — was not made “for any algorithm,” and that presenting it as an animated, family movie was simply “the right way to tell” the story.
“I just thought that there hasn’t been a recent retelling of this for a new generation,” Serkis said.
