Andy Serkis to direct animated Animal Farm, which is bound to be called “too political”
Serkis is trading Venom for Snowball in a new version of the George Orwell classic
Aux News Animal Farm
A weary nation has a new headache on the horizon. Andy Serkis will be directing an animated adaptation of George Orwell’s classic work Animal Farm, and, Jesus, someone’s going to call it “too political,” aren’t they? Eyes can only take so much rolling!
Serkis is no stranger to animal-centric adaptations of classic works. A few years ago, he survived the CGI arms race between Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book and his harder-edged version of the same story, Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle. Hard to believe that a movie called The Jungle Book made nearly a billion dollars, and something called Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle was dumped on Netflix and buried by the algorithm. Apparently, no one was that interested in what Benedict Cumberbatch brought to Shere Khan.
After finding his directorial footing with the Venom sequel, Serkis is back with more animals and an animation studio that wants him to bring George Orwell’s soon-to-be banned book to the silver screen. Per Deadline, Serkis will direct Animal Farm with a script by Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors, Storks). Stoller also has some experience adapting classic works of literature, having written the screenplays for Gulliver’s Travels and Captain Underpants.
“The challenging journey to bring this extraordinary story to the screen has been finally rewarded by the opportunity to partner with the brilliant team at Aniventure and Cinesite,” Serkis said in a statement. “Together we hope to make our version of Orwell’s ever relevant masterpiece, emotionally powerful, humorous, and relatable for all ages. A tale not only for our times, but for generations to come.”
It’s unclear what kind of animated movie this will be, a Pixar-style CGI cartoon or a “photo-realistic” motion-captured thing, which made Serkis a household name. Founded in 2014, Aniventure is an animation studio that aims to create original features with “high production values.” Thus far, they’ve produced Riverdance: The Animated Adventure and the upcoming Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank. Finally, someone made a movie out of the legend of Hank.
Paws Of Fury comes out this summer and looks like a Kung Fu Panda. The trailer features some stylistic flourishes—though they’re getting points deducted for that “send a tweet” joke. Who is that for? No child cares about Twitter, and no adult wants to be reminded of Twitter when they’re spending time with their loved ones.
There’s no word yet as to when Animal Farm will be released, but we look forward to the culture war over Serkis making George Orwell’s Animal Farm “too political.”
56 Comments
I guess some CGI-heavy literary adaptations are more equal than others.
COMING SOON: Zack Snyder’s Pride & Prejudice!…in which a damaged (but beautiful!) Elizabeth, with copious tattoos and black eyeliner, makes her family uneasy with her copious tattoos and black eyeliner. Also she fights werewolves who are constantly trying to kidnap her or some shit, which is the reason why she’s beautiful (and damaged!). Trailer to drop soon, set to the strains of a slow pianoforte cover of “Hallelujah”.
And filmed in SepiaVision!
set to the strains of a slow pianoforte cover of “Hallelujah”Most folks just call it a piano now.
I call it a softLOUD
We really never should’ve given nerds with zero imagination or interpersonal skills a platform, let alone a share of the cultural market.
It was cleverer when I said it.
In other news, Ezra Miller was arrested again!https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/19/entertainment/ezra-miller-arrest/index.html
I was curious if the CNN article would respect Miller’s preferred pronouns, and was surprised to find that they avoided the issue entirely by simply not using any pronouns, although that may not have been deliberate (it’s a short article and the sentence construction doesn’t seem awkward).
Let me try:
Ezra Miller is a jerk-off who has Ezra Miller’s head jammed firmly up Ezra Miller’s ass. “Ezra Miller” and “respect” do not belong in the same thought.
Dude’s going to fucking kill someone if he doesn’t get some help.
Or themself, or the DCEU (what’s left of it).
The pigs are Republicans.
More accurately, they are autocrats. It doesn’t matter whether they started left-wing or right-wing. They are the end result of putting too much power into the hands of those with no accountability.
Nah… it doesn’t even take in America. The pigs are fascists.
You’re joking, right?
If anybody has the strength and vision to drain most of the politics and barbed commentary out of it, it’s surely Serkis. He’ll spend way more time getting Old Major’s walk right than giving two shits about the message.
I can’t wait for the inevitable right wing tweets claiming Orwell (an avowed socialist) was one of theirs because he wrote a book that was critical of the Russian revolution.
“No see when it ended with the pigs indistinguishable from the humans what it really meant was capitalism would win out”- some asshole, probably
They just don’t fuckin know what words mean, and they have sorted them into good and bad piles, and hold the good ones close, while hucking the bad ones at the people they don’t like.
Don’t forget the list of names he gave to Foreign Office about suspected commie subversives including Michael Foot and Charlie Chaplin. The RWers would be proud.
Orwell was a staunch anti-Stalinist and was suspicious of anyone he felt might support the USSR.Left wing politics have always been jumbled like that.
I saw Andy Serkis on an interview years ago trot out this execrable
comment “If Orwell was a alive today, what would he be writing about?”.
That’s one reason I’m expecting this adaptation to be a bit of a
disaster – he is going to be putting out his own politics in, rather than presenting the complexity of Orwell’s story, especially as he then started talking about workers being abused in pursuit of a profit. It’s going
to be something using Orwell’s narrative device, but that doesn’t mean it should use the name.
Having seen enough left wing groups fragment as one set decides that they are the most correct and others must come in to line with them, I feel like Orwell’s story is still important. I don’t mind the story that Serkis was alluding to telling (I think there is something vaguely horrific in the US resistance to things like OSHA), I just feel like it should stand on its own brand, rather than trying to piggyback on a famous property
piggyback, huh?
I wish I had intended that pun… Just pretend that this post doesn’t exist!
Too late! Starred = lives forever.
Yeah I know.
It is not at all “jumbled” to be a socialist and also anti-Stalinist.
Yeah, I have a hard time imagining why this would be a target of the right. Orwell was being critical of the risks of collectivism, which of course is no surprise to anyone who has so much as heard of 1984. You can be a socialist and still recognize the dangers of full-on authoritarian communism (redundant, I know).
I don’t think a leftist being opposed to a brutal dictatorship dressing itself in the facade of communism and marxism is particularly “jumbled”. I mean, that’s kind of the point of the book – Stalinism was just replacing one brutal, uncaring elite with another.
His list also included LGBTQ+ people and minority activists (like Paul Robeson, who he deemed “anti-white”).
A socialist who advocated a violent overthrow of the state . . . Well, great minds think alike.
They think the government of Oceania were the good guys.
Well they think Orwell was warning them against Twitter in 1984 so they aren’t very bright. But to be fair. When I was in High School in the early 90s and read Animal Farm our teacher taught us that it was “anti-communism” which is a very proud and incorrect take but we were dumb kids that didn’t know any better. And high school teachers in the 90s didn’t know or care to teach the differences between Communism, Socialism and Stalinism.
The GQP is pro-Russian now.
Wait, you mean its not about barn yard animals getting into friendly mischief?
Call my tastes simple, but Orwell was one of my favorites growing up. I first read Animal Farm in school and adored it, and I loved the original cartoon as well. So I’ll definitely be catching this.
Some Pig!
This comment is TERRIFIC.
The most Orwellian news I’ve read all year.
nicolas stoller ‘do a third romantic comedy with jason segel’ challenge. forgetting sarah marshall and the five year engagement are, like, the best romcoms of the 2010s (marshall’s a cheat at 2008). anyway, everything i like from nicolas stoller has no bearing on this project!
FSM is one of my favorite comedies of the last 20 years, especially the bonkers unrated version. Makes me happy that it’s in regular cable rotation these days.
and the word ‘underrated’ gets thrown around a lot but ‘the 5 year engagement’ is excellent, and that cast is truly insane: aside from segel and emily blunt you’ve got everyone from chris pratt to kevin hart to david paymer to alison brie to rhys ifans to randall park to dakota johnson and that’s not even counting cameos.
I’ve actually never seen it, so on the list it goes. True LOL comedies are in precious supply.
i hope you like it. i think it’s really charming, very funny and has a genuinely good love story.
This has been known for years.
The themes of Animal Farm will continue to ring true to anyone who’s ever been part of a leftist organization or community.
“Venom For Snowball” sounds like an emo album.
Once Hollywood producers get their hands on it, it willl probably end up with a super-mega-happy ending.
I thought Twitter was where one went to make up a guy and get angry at him; I guess that’s the job of AvClub journalists as well.
So Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank is supposedly based on Blazing Saddles. It was originally titled Blazing Samurai. Brooks has a story by credit on the thing. It still looks terrible as there is no ways a kids movie can be based on Blazing Saddles and actually work. But it’s potential gonna be Brooks last on screen credit so I may have to watch it and cry
The guy that directed Venom 2 is making an Animal Farm movie written by the guy who wrote Neighbors and Storks. I mean, this is a LOCK for a quality film.
1954 Animated version1999 Live Action version
No idea that there was a film version from 1999. Is it any good?
I didn’t know either until I went to google to animated version. Will have to watch. Confession: I read 1984 four times. I could never get through animal farm.
IIRC Serkis had said in the past that it would be a motion-captured CGI movie version. It’s been at least three years since he expressed interest in doing this, and I thought it was already in production. I guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer. My son was just reading this for school. I hope he learned a lot from it.