For the actor and director Andy Serkis<\/a>, better known perhaps as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings saga or Caesar from the new Planet of the Apes films<\/a>, the sound of freedom in his new children\u2019s adaptation of Orwell\u2019s novella is a loud, long PPRRRRTTT expelled from the backside of a pot-bellied pig voiced by Seth Rogen. Not a classic take on the text, then \u2013 but if toilet humour is what it takes to engage a young audience in Orwell\u2019s cautionary message, then so be it. Not everyone agrees.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s interesting how the film did in the States, which was\u2026 not well,\u201d laughs Serkis, 62, over video call; his face \u2013 so often obscured by graphics; sometimes he\u2019s an ape, other times a cave-dwelling hobbit \u2013 is lit up by his laptop screen. \u201cIt was not received particularly well, seemingly because of the polarised situation that the States seems to be in at the moment.\u201d The trailer alone sparked controversy, racking up 11 million views and a load of vitriol when it debuted last year. People accused Serkis of watering down the original, sapping its potency. Orwell would be turning in his grave, was the general consensus. \u201cTalk about starting a debate,\u201d grins Serkis. \u201cI mean, it was more like a culture war.\u201d<\/p>\n He perhaps poured gasoline on the fire when he wore a bright red Trump-inspired cap reading \u201cMake Animal Farm Fiction Again\u201d to the film\u2019s US premiere back in April. \u201cWell, yes, that was in the spirit of the film without being too\u2026\u201d he laughs, trailing off. \u201cWe opened theatrically in the States first and so it felt like that was pertinent for that audience.\u201d Later in our conversation, Serkis laments that the \u201cculture war\u201d of it all has dissuaded parents from taking their kids to see the movie \u2013 \u201cwhich is what we\u2019re trying to avoid this time around, so we\u2019re approaching the marketing in a slightly different way\u201d. That way, \u201cparents will hopefully ignore the vehemence of the online assassination\u201d. <\/p>\n The marketing plot may go some way in explaining why Serkis is being uncharacteristically coy this morning \u2013 speaking in vaguer terms than usual about dictators and despots around the world. No naming, no shaming. (The Cybertruck-looking car driven by Animal Farm\u2019s billionaire villain was designed long before Elon Musk\u2019s controversial vehicles hit the road, Serkis has previously clarified.) And it\u2019s true that while Orwell\u2019s story is specific to Soviet-era politics, its themes of power, corruption, and the wilful ignorance of the masses seem to be ever-present; timely and timeless.<\/p>\n \u201cOrwell was very prescient when he was writing as an anti-authoritarian,\u201d says Serkis. \u201cI guess he knew that it would always be a relevant piece of literature for any age group at any time. Strangely, even in the time since I started on the project, it has become more prescient \u2013 particularly the destruction of truth, the capacity for power to corrupt, and, you know, leaders not particularly listening to the people that put them there, or leaders who have been in power for generations. It bizarrely feels very timely and relevant, but I\u2019m sure it will be equally as timely and relevant in 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years\u2019 time.\u201d <\/p>\n The book\u2019s enduring relevance is depressing, of course \u2013 but useful in the case of Serkis\u2019s film, given it took over 15 years to make. It had been on the set of Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2010 that he came up with the idea: \u201cWe were filming this one scene: Caesar, my character, is leading a rebellion and they break out of this facility where they\u2019ve been treated very badly and I thought, \u2018Gosh, no one has made a version of Animal Farm for years now.\u2019\u201d He had originally conceived it to be motion-capture like Apes, but in the end decided that a photo-realistic horse with the voice of Woody Harrelson being trotted off to the glue factory would be a shade too dark for kids. <\/p>\n Whether they\u2019ve had their face scanned or not, anyone\u2019s image can be put into terrible positions of being exploited or used in nefarious ways<\/p>\n On paper, Animal Farm sounds like an easy sell. It\u2019s a world-famous story with a world-famous director and a world-famous cast (in addition to Rogen and Harrelson, Laverne Cox, Kieran Culkin, Steve Buscemi, Glenn Close, and Jim Parsons all lend their voices). In reality, it struggled to find a studio. Serkis has said the reluctance was a marketing issue: Orwell for kids is not the easiest thing to pitch. But he persevered, and he isn\u2019t about to let some keyboard critics dampen the mood. <\/p>\n More interesting to Serkis than the debate raging in the comments section of a YouTube trailer is the one he hopes will unfold around family tables at dinner time. \u201cWhat\u2019s more important to me is that schoolchildren can sit around and discuss it, or talk with their parents and their grandparents about it,\u201d says Serkis. \u201cEveryone will have a different opinion, and that was really the intention from the word go.\u201d<\/p>\n His three kids, all between 20 and 30 years of age, are a little old for his take on Animal Farm. \u201cBut we do talk about current events and what\u2019s going on in the world,\u201d says Serkis, who attributes that curiosity to his time studying at Lancaster University. \u201cIt was a fairly left-wing university and there was a huge sense of community in Lancaster, and then I went on to work at the Duke\u2019s Playhouse, which again was very community-based. We were always asking questions in terms of how storytelling can impact society, solve issues and problems. So when my wife Raine [Ashbourne] and myself started to have children, they grew up in that sort of environment.\u201d <\/p>\n Over the years, Serkis has added many strings to his bow as an actor and director of both indies and big blockbusters, but he is still best known as the man who defined motion-capture. He is the semi-hidden face (and body) of Gollum, Caesar, King Kong, Supreme Leader Snoke, and Captain Haddock. It\u2019s not a stretch to say that the film industry would not look like it does today without him; James Cameron has said previously that it was seeing Serkis, so lifelike and compelling as an ape, that convinced him to make his cinema-conquering Avatar franchise. <\/p>\n It\u2019s odd to think motion-capture was once demonised as an abomination in acting. Two decades on, those stigmas are no more, says Serkis. \u201cThat\u2019s drastically changed. So many great performances have been created with motion-capture with great actors\u2026 [like] Kate Winslet and Zoe Saldana in Avatar.\u201d He chalks up a lot of the early disdain to simple confusion. \u201cThere was a lot of misunderstanding about what the process was,\u201d says Serkis. \u201cThe great thing about Peter Jackson was that he opened up the world of filmmaking to a vast audience, and the process of performance capture was a large part of that.\u201d It\u2019s true that looking at footage of Serkis on the set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, on all fours and scowling in a hooded skin-tight mo-cap suit, bestows a new understanding and respect for the art form. No one could say that\u2019s any less vulnerable than a \u201cconventional\u201d acting performance. For what it is worth, Serkis does not distinguish between the two. \u201cAt all,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Given his experience pioneering new tech in the industry, Serkis is better positioned than most to have an opinion on artificial intelligence. \u201cI mean, look, AI in any industry is going to have its pros and cons,\u201d he ventures. \u201cIf it becomes about taking jobs away from people, that\u2019s not a good thing. However, if it\u2019s about creativity and opening up a world of creativity to people who may not necessarily be great artists, but they\u2019ve got ideas they need help to bring into being\u2026\u201d He trails off.<\/p>\n It would not be totally ridiculous to assume that Serkis has had his face digitally scanned more times than anyone else in the world. Is he worried that his likeness will be used without permission after his death? \u201cI mean, it\u2019s going to happen anyway,\u201d he reasons. \u201cIt\u2019s happening now to people regardless of whether they\u2019ve had their face scanned or not. Anyone\u2019s image can be put into terrible positions of being exploited or used in nefarious ways, which is why it\u2019s down to us as human beings to teach AI to be good parents to it. If it\u2019s used in not-positive ways, then it\u2019s because we\u2019ve taught it to operate that way.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not promising that we\u2019ve proved ourselves to be such bad parents to it so far, I laugh.<\/p>\n \u201cYes\u2026 but that\u2019s the Orwell question: how do we make it better next time around?\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Animal Farm\u2019 is in cinemas from 17 July<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-537409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Video](\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/img\/logo-white-out.svg\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Animal-Farm-Still_16.jpeg\")
The pigs of Serkis\u2019s very modern take on \u2018Animal Farm\u2019 (Aniventure\/The Imaginarium Studios Cinesite)<\/p>\n![\"Serkis](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/newFile.jpg-1.jpg\")
Serkis as Caesar the ape in \u2018War for the Planet of the Apes\u2019 (20th Century Fox)<\/p>\n![\"Serkis](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/shutterstock_editorial_402897z.jpeg\")
Serkis in his motion-capture suit on the set of 2002\u2019s \u2018The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers\u2019 (Shutterstock)<\/p>\n