Famous for bringing to life CGI characters like King Kong, The Lord of the Rings‘ Gollum, Rise of the Planet of the Apes‘ Caesar and The Adventures of Tintin‘s Captain Haddock, Andy Serkis is currently racking up quite a deal of directing experience serving as the second unit director on Peter Jackson’s upcoming The Hobbit trilogy. Now, The Hollywood Reporter brings word that Serkis is planning to fully helm The Imaginarium’s upcoming adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Published in 1945, the novel serves as allegory for the rise of communism and details a sociopolitical uprising amongst barnyard animals.
The Imaginarium, a recently-formed production company, plans to utilize performance capture technology to bring the characters to life, although Serkis stresses that work is still being done to nail the precise approach. He notes that, like The Hobbit, the adaptation may make use of 3D and high frame rate photography.
Also in the works at The Imaginarium is an adaptation of Samantha Shannon’s The Bone Season. Set to be published in 2013, the sci-fi tale is officially described as follows:
2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. She works as an envoy between secret cells: she drops in and out of peoples minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant, and in her world the world of Scion she commits high treason simply by breathing.
It is raining the day her life changes forever. Attacked, kidnapped and transported to Oxford, a city that has been kept secret for two hundred 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.
Serkis is slated to be involved with that production as well although what role he will take behind and/or in front of the camera remains to be seen.
