Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with Andy Serkis at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival for Animal Farm.

Andy Serkis’ adaptation of Animal Farm aims to reach a broad audience with a star-studded voice cast and timely political themes.

In this interview, Serkis discusses the changes made from the book to the screen, draws parallels between Animal Farm and Andor, and shares a filming update for The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

Andy Serkis’ animated adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm was first officially announced only a few years ago, but the producer, director, and actor has been ruminating on this tale since he first read the novella on the bus to school. “That lived with me,” he tells Collider’s Steve Weintraub, only a day after the movie’s world premiere at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Orwell’s anti-totalitarian message clearly struck a chord with Serkis, who has made a name for himself in Hollywood in motion-capture work, like in the Planet of the Apes “Caesar Trilogy,” as well as emotional on-screen performances, such as in Tony Gilroy’s Andor — both of which depict political unrest and revolutions. Now, he’s taking a similar approach to PoTA and Gilroy by adapting Animal Farm into a star-studded animated feature that can “reach out to so many people and get them thinking.” The story comes alive through the vocal performances of Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo, Seth Rogen, Woody Harrelson, Kieran Culkin, Steve Buscemi, Glenn Close, and Serkis. In this exclusive interview, Serkis discusses how he discovered a new way to tell a timeless story, explaining the changes they made from the book to a movie that “can speak to a vast audience.” He shares a conversation he had with Gilroy about Andor, the similarities between the two projects, and also addresses his character, Kino Loy, not returning for Season 2. Serkis also shares a very exciting update for his next directorial venture, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.
Andy Serkis Says Going Back to ‘Andor’ Would “Be Difficult”

“It’s way, way better that we leave him in Narkina 5.”

COLLIDER: Before we jump into Animal Farm, I do have to ask you just a few quick things. As you know, Andor is one of my all-time favorite shows of the last few years. Are you a little sad you weren’t in Season 2, or is it actually best for the character? ANDY SERKIS: I ultimately think it’s best for the character. It was such a great arc, and it had a very, very definite and heroic conclusion. I think, in many ways, to go back would be difficult because it has left a mark. I was so surprised at how emotionally effective that character was, actually, and so I think it’s way, way better that we leave him in Narkina 5, on his own. Have you been watching Season 2? SERKIS: I haven’t had the chance. I’ve heard it’s incredible. I’ve got to tell you, man, it’s a masterpiece. It’s really unbelievable. SERKIS: Is it more of a masterpiece than the first one? Well, because you’re in Season 1, Season 1 is better, but if you weren’t here, I’d say Season 2 is pretty epic. SERKIS: No, I’ve heard it’s incredible. It’s really unbelievable. Have you noticed more people talking to you about the show? Because Season 2 seems like it’s even more popular. SERKIS: Yeah. This year, I’ve actually done a bunch of conventions, and everyone wants to talk about Andor. It’s remarkable how much it’s affected people, which is great. It’s such a beautiful piece of writing, such a beautiful conceit. Tony Gilroy and all the directors who worked on those episodes just cut something brilliant.
‘Andor’ and ‘Animal Farm’ Set Out To Share the Same Message

“I want to write about fascism.”

Image via Lucasfilm

I want to actually connect Andor to Animal Farm. Both deal with fascism, and very similar things run through both pieces of writing. SERKIS: Absolutely. Can you sort of touch on that a little bit, if you don’t mind? SERKIS: I remember having a very long conversation with Tony about what was his motivation for even starting on Andor, and he said, “I want to write about fascism. I want to write about authoritarianism, and I want to do it within a realm that you can have that double thing of an emotional story, characters you really care about, a franchise that speaks to a massive audience, and use that to explore really important themes.” And of course, that’s exactly what Orwell was doing, and in a language that was going to appeal to all ages, and particularly speak to young people without patronizing them, making them feel about the characters, and understand them emotionally, but also allow the older members of the audiences to see that and feel that and understand the satire.
‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ Convinced Andy Serkis to Adapt ‘Animal Farm’

Serkis’ plans for the adaptation changed over the years, but the impact George Orwell’s novel had on him never did.

Image via Aniventure

One of the things I want to touch on is your history with Animal Farm. I know that’s something you’ve been very passionate about. I think you tried to make this back in 2013 or something. If you don’t mind, touch on your history with it and why it’s been so important to you to bring this story to movie screens. SERKIS: It was one of the very first young adult books that I read. I remember vividly sitting on a bus going to school and reading it and being deeply affected by it and not really fully understanding why. But just the sense of injustice, the sense of mistruth that these innocent characters were completely having piled on them time after time, and their original version for a utopic kind of existence being flattened. I just remember the injustice of that really affected me. Then, characters like Boxer, of course, a beautiful, noble character that gives his life for a belief system that’s been turned on its head. That lived with me. Weirdly, The Hobbit and Animal Farm were two books that I read pretty much at the same time, and those two stories, obviously, have really impacted me enough to follow me around for most of my life. So, that then led to, I saw a stage production of it at the National Theater, and I thought, “Gosh, this is such a powerful story. It really does work as a visual piece.” Obviously, I then went to university and eventually became an actor, but it always stuck with me that, one day, I’d like to tell this story, perhaps as a theater piece. Then, if you jump forward a bunch of years, I’m making Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and there’s the sequence where they break out of the facility, and I suddenly realized, “Here’s Caesar leading this disparate group of apes,” and it was a real moment of realization that there hadn’t been a new screen version of Animal Farm for such a long time, and therefore, let’s try and get that going. That was at the time that Jonathan Cavendish and I were starting to form the Imaginarium, and we just thought, “Let’s do it.” So we contacted the Orwell estate. At that point, the book was still not in the public domain. We’ve been working on it for so long, it became in the public domain. [Laughs] But we decided that we’d go for it. Originally, we were going to do a live-action motion capture version of it, and then it found its way gradually to Aniventure. We had a lot of problems. There were a lot of people we went to with it who liked the idea of it, but were frightened of it because of the political messaging, and is it a four-quadrant movie? Etc., etc. Who’s it for? It took years to find the partners that we did eventually, which were Aniventure and Cinesite, and by then, we decided not to make it a motion capture, real, live-action movie, but an animation. That really freed us up to tell the story that we wanted to tonally in the way that we wanted to do it. I remember talking to you about you saying you wanted to do a motion capture.
Changes Have Been Made From Page to Screen for Andy Serkis’ ‘Animal Farm’

“It was almost like A Bronx Tale story.”

Image via Aniventure

With this film, it’s disturbing to me that what Orwell wrote about back in the ‘40s is as relevant as ever. I think that some of the changes you made from the book to the screen opened the door for maybe a younger audience to see it and to hopefully be impacted by it. Can you talk about why you wanted to make certain changes to the book for your version of the movie? SERKIS: Crucially, the book doesn’t have a central protagonist, a central character, and for a movie, you kind of have to, really, to allow the audience to travel the journey with a particular character so that you get to feel and experience it through their eyes. Now, later on in the book, in the last quarter of the book, there are references to the next generation of pigs who have been brought up a long time down the line. The revolution was years ago, nobody can really remember it, but the pigs are now the elite, and I just suddenly thought, “This is a really interesting place to start.” It talks about the young piglets who were walking around; they are the next generation, and I thought, “I think this is the place to start. Have a piglet who understands that they are sort of more intelligent to a certain extent, but actually, all his best friends, i.e., Boxer and all of the other animals, make him connect with them, be best friends, and not see differences between them.” So, that was the point. So, Lucky, we called him, because he is lucky, I had this idea that he should be best friends with Boxer, and that it should be seen through his eyes. It was almost like A Bronx Tale story in the sense that Snowball and Napoleon, the two pigs who differ hugely in their ideologies — Snowball doing the right thing, working for the community, working for the greater good, and Napoleon, obviously he’s just self-centered and wants everything for himself — to have Lucky be caught between these two opposing forces as the rebellion is happening. By doing that, we allowed kids, particularly, to go through and ask this question, “What’s happening here? I feel like Lucky’s doing the right thing,” and then he gets to a point where he is being corrupted so badly, and he can’t see it. I think by giving kids that kind of moral dilemma, it really underpinned it without having to be too messagey about the politics, really. How long before Trump bans your film? I’m joking around. Sort of. SERKIS: [Laughs] Look, the fact of the matter is, this book is 80 years old, and history repeats itself time and time again.

Related

Andy Serkis’ Horror Series Sees Tuppence Middleton Board a ‘Blood Cruise’ in First Images

Middleton leads an ensemble that includes Björn Bengtsson, Kolbjörn Skarsgård, and Marika Lagercrantz.

By the way, how many people have tried to ban the book? People in power don’t want this story being told. SERKIS: No. Because it is innocent, and that’s the point. It can speak to a vast audience like Andor. It can completely reach out to so many people and get them thinking, and that was the absolute central inspiration for writing the book. How do you begin a dialogue in whatever era that you’re born in, where there is authoritarianism or totalitarianism or fascism or whatever the regime is? How do you get young people to engage with it? Or when their parents are afraid to speak out or think differently, or try and confront it. So, this is why we made the film. I said in my opening night speech last night, and I really mean it, we’ve not made this film with any algorithm in mind. It’s not to “fit” any audience specifically, it is to open questions in an entertaining way. I want to just point out how far America has fallen. I’m American and I’m embarrassed. Back in the day, the CIA, I read, were the first people to finance a version of Animal Farm, and now you think about our government, and they wouldn’t in a million years want people thinking like this. It’s crazy. SERKIS: Absolutely. Obviously, when Orwell wrote it, it was specific characters. He was writing about Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, the church, the state. The dogs were the Stasi. He was very specific about what those characters represented. Now, we can’t revisit that particular moment in history, but what we can do is keep the book and the movie alive by making it feel relevant politically. This is not geared towards anyone specifically. We’re living in a world where there are multiple regimes worldwide, as we know, that are oppressing people, and so it has an international language to it. Again, we’ve always said that we wanted to smuggle the politics, and we never wanted to hit people over the head with it. We want them to mostly emotionally engage with the characters and be moved by and be made to laugh by it, because as there is a lot of humor in it, and there are some brilliant comedic performances from Seth [Rogen] and Woody [Harrelson]. Oh, believe me, with Seth’s performance against what he normally plays, I could single out all these voices. Everyone did such great work. But I do think that it’s great that you’re part of two things, Andor and Animal Farm, that both open your eyes to what’s going on.
Andy Serkis Gives an Exciting Filming Update for ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum’

“We’re investigating in greater depth the character formerly known as Smeagol.”

Custom Image by Zanda Rice

I’m almost out of time, but people at Collider are very excited about a certain movie you might be directing. SERKIS: What might that be? I don’t know. There’s a character you played in the past… SERKIS: What was it exactly? Dobby? [Laughs] For fans, what can you tease people in terms of how it’s going, when you might start shooting, and all that kind of stuff? SERKIS: We’re very early on in the process. We’ve been talking about the film over the course of the last year. We’re about to start a period of prep in the next few months or so. We will be shooting in the early to mid part of next year, I guess, and then it’ll be as long as it takes to shoot, which it’s a sizable movie, all ready for a December ‘27 release. I’m incredibly excited to go back and work with my friends and family in New Zealand and actually do something which is, I think, going to be surprising, and yet very much part of the lore and the feel of the trilogy. The sensibility of it will feel, I think, close to that, and yet we’re investigating in greater depth the character formerly known as Smeagol, but mostly known as Gollum. So you’re filming in New Zealand? How far along is the script? Are you guys still working on it? SERKIS: Yeah. We’re still working. We’re in very, very, sort of relatively early stages, but it’s getting very exciting. Animal Farm celebrated its world premiere at Annecy on June 9. The film has yet to set an official theatrical release date.