Andy Serkis to direct motion capture adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm

Andy Serkis was already a brilliantly skilled and insightful craftsman in the world of motion capture acting, and has recently added to that very particular set of skills by being Second-Unit Director on THE HOBBIT Trilogy for about 200 days over the course of this past year. 

Serkis has decided to now take that new knowledge/experience, combine it with his motion capture knowhow, and collaborate with London-based studio The Imaginarium to create a new version of George Orwell’s classic novel ANIMAL FARM.  The Imaginarium is a motion-capture studio co-formed by Serkis back in 2011, one which works as much on the creative side of motion capture storytelling as it does in the research and development of new motion capture technology.  Serkis and company are also, in more specific terms, taking Serkis’ experience with high-frame-rate photography/projection and 3D filmmaking on THE HOBBIT and applying those to the motion capture work they do in studio.  “The wonderful thing about 48 fps is [how it handles] the integration of live action and CG elements; that is something I learned from THE HOBBIT,” said Serkis. “We are so used to 24 fps and the romance of celluloid … but at 48 fps, you cannot deny the existence of these CG creations in the same time frame and space and environment as the live action. It works incredibly well.”

Beyond ANIMAL FARM, Serkis also plans to directing and/or be involved on the acting side of things in future Imaginarium productions – these include a currently-unnamed property and an adaptation of Samantha Shannon’s as-yet unpublished book titled THE BONE SEASON, the story of which “begins in 2059 and follows 19-year-old Paige Mahoney, who is working in London’s criminal underworld as an envoy between secret cells: She drops in and out of people’s minds. Paige is a lucid dreamer, a clairvoyant, and in her world — the world of Scion — she commits high treason simply by breathing. Attacked, kidnapped and transported to Oxford, a city that has been kept secret for 200 years, she meets Warden, a Rephaite with dark honey skin and heavy-lidded yellow eyes. He is the single most beautiful and frightening thing she has ever laid eyes on — and he will become her keeper.”

Honestly I don’t quite know what I just read there in that description, but I’m sure things will become more clear as further information is revealed (start of production date, casting, etc…).  Serkis has a fair amount going on right now, what with post-production for THE HOBBIT going on and (hopefully) a sequel to THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN coming up in the near future, and what with how time consuming the post-production process is with motion capture there’s no guarentee any of this is coming at all soon.  More as we hear it.