Andy Serkis is hardly a rookie behind the camera, but his directorial efforts prior to Venom: Let There Be Carnage have flown largely under the radar, although he’ll be more in-demand than ever should the blockbuster superhero sequel live up to the lofty box office expectations when it hits theaters on Friday.
Serkis cut his teeth as the second unit director on Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, before making his feature debut with well-received biopic Breathe, with Andrew Garfield in the lead role. His next release was Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, which was hit with a string of delays due its close proximity to Jon Favreau’s Disney remake, and it was ultimately sold off to Netflix ahead of an eventual December 2018 rollout.
The early reactions to Venom: Let There Be Carnage have been fairly enthusiastic, but Serkis is taking an altogether different track for his next movie, after confirming in an interview with Wired that his long-gestating adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm is up next.
“I’ve got a whole bunch of movies that are kind of in development, but what comes up, likely, will be Animal Farm, I think is probably the next thing that I’m doing. George Orwell’s Animal Farm. That is actually currently in the early works of being developed into a movie.”
Serkis has been attached to the project since 2011, and he’ll be utilizing the motion capture techniques he pioneered with his Imaginarium company to bring the world to life. Netflix acquired the distribution rights in the summer of 2018 with The Batman‘s Matt Reeves named as one of the producers, and the presumed success of Venom: Let There Be Carnage should give Animal Farm a serious nudge towards entering production at long last.
