Andy Serkis Explains His Adaptation of ANIMAL FARM Will Shift the Satiric Perspective to Modern Day

Andy Serkis has been working on developing an adaptation of George Orwell’s classic novella Animal Farm for years. The film is currently in production at the visual effects company Cinesite, and I’ve been curious to see how Serkis handles the source material.

Well, as you might have expected, he’s changing some things up. Animal Farm tells the story of a group of farm animals who successfully revolt against their cruel human owner, only to be enslaved again by the unscrupulous pig Napoleon, whose slogan is "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

The original story is a satirical commentary on Stalin and the system that he ushered in after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in the Soviet Union. This new movie will not target Stalinist Russia, though, instead it will shift its satiric perspective to what is happening now in modern day.

During a Toronto ComiCon panel, Serkis shared that he’s been working closely with George Orwell's estate to update the narrative without betraying the author's intent. He explained:

"[I]t's very, very contemporary. It also has a lot of humor in it, and it also has a particular point of view."

As for what that particular point of view is, Serkis said:

"I mean, look around the world, what's happening, you can see how eternally relevant that book is still. But the ways and the language of telling that story have changed. And the targets, the characters that are being satirized are not Stalin and Trotsky and all of those people, they are — I'm not going to say who."

While he won’t say who, it’s not hard to imagine who he’s talking about. Regardless, history has a tendency of repeating itself. It’s like people never learn from the horrific mistakes of the past.

Source: /Film