Netflix has aquired the filming rights to George Orwell’s seminal novel, Animal Farm, and now they have put actor/director Andy Serkis at the helm of the project.
The project will be a performance-capture film and will reunite Serkis with Matt Reeves, who is a producer on the project after they worked together on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes. Matt Reeves signed an overall deal with Netflix back in January.
Serkis, who has wanted to tackle the project for years, had this to say about it coming to fruition:
“We are incredibly excited to have finally found the perfect creative home in Netflix for this extraordinarily zeitgeist work by George Orwell. On top of that, to be re-united with my great friend Matt Reeves — with his acute sensitivity, storytelling intelligence and honesty and command in this realm — is to have the very best scenario for our long-held passion to bring this fable alive.”
George Orwell’s novel was published in 1945, and the author said it was informed by the Russian revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union. If you didn’t read it in school, the premise involves a group of animals who rebel against the humans who own their farm and win their independence. The architects of the revolution create a utopian environment based on equality, but a pig named Napoleon twists the original intent, slowly eliminates his rivals and enacts seven commandments — the basic of which declares that “all animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
