Andy Serkis on Bringing Animal Farm to Life for Modern Audiences

Andy Serkis, known for portraying characters such as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot and directing films like Breathe and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, has turned his eye to the realm of animation. Over ten years ago, he began planning for an adaptation of George Orwell’s 1945 allegorical novella, Animal Farm, which has now come to fruition under his direction.

The new film, which he bills as “for all ages,” takes some liberty with the classic story, Serkis told World Screen during a roundtable session at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where the film debuted. The biggest change is the introduction of the protagonist, Lucky.

“When Orwell was writing it, he wanted to make a political story accessible, which is why he put it inside the innocence of these animals,” Serkis said. “But the book doesn’t really have a central protagonist. One of the things I felt very passionate about was that we have a character we can follow. We put him in the hot seat to make the moral decisions and put him on a track where he thinks he’s doing the right thing, but then gets corrupted. We get corrupted alongside Lucky.”

“There are pigs mentioned later in the book—the next generation of young piglets—so that was where I took the cue from,” he explained. “And then I based it on A Bronx Tale-type story, where a younger character is guided by adults [Napoleon and Snowball] in two different directions. He finds himself caught between two ideologies, making the wrong choice and realizing that at a certain point in the journey. By putting the young people who are going to be watching this in the hot seat, it charges it for them.”

Lucky is voiced by Gaten Matarazzo, who is joined by a roster of acting superstars: Seth Rogen, Kieran Culkin, Glenn Close, Steve Buscemi, Laverne Cox, Woody Harrelson, Jim Parsons, Kathleen Turner and Iman Vellani, alongside Serkis himself.

Rogen and Parsons were on board very early on—as far back as 2012. “Aside from those people who were long-time supporters and wanted to be part of it, I’ve worked with Woody Harrelson now five times,” Serkis said. “He’s a very good friend of mine, and he was always going to be perfect for Boxer. There’s a charm that Woody brings to it and a humor as well that is delicious.”

Serkis made sure to allow each actor to play to their strengths. “Seth was brilliant at improvising, Kathleen was great at taking the text and twisting and turning it in her own indomitable style,” he noted. “And Glenn Close—she manages to make [Freida Pilkington] so sinister, but at the same time, you’re drawn to her. Everyone that we worked with brought their A-game and had fun. All the time, we wanted to dance on this knife-edge of being comedic, but at the same time heartfelt. Mostly, we wanted it to be believable and truthful. It’s important to have great storytellers all come together to tell such an amazing piece of literature.”

While Orwell’s book ends on a bleak note—the animals come to realize the pigs have become just as cruel as the humans they had initially rebelled against—the ending of Serkis’s adaptation isn’t quite as dark.

“We live in such a bleak world at the moment, and we didn’t want to have a fake happy ending, but we wanted some hope,” he said. “History repeats itself, and we always make the same mistakes and keep going round and round. We wanted to at least offer up a moment, a brief moment, where Lucky actually confronts the darkness that is Napoleon and, having gone through and made the wrong moral choices, he somehow makes amends to the rest of the animals.”

“I don’t think it’s an overly optimistic ending,” he added. “It still says it’s going to be difficult next time around. That’s where we leave it. [They] are starting again, and the animals have to sit down and go, OK, now what? As Boxer says, they aren’t going to find it easy, but at least they’d try. And that’s all we can do. Every time we go wrong, all we can do is try and make amends and make things better.”