Almost a year ago, I had the pleasure of watching a unique stage production of George Orwell’s Animal Farm being done at the Madison Street Theatre at Oak Park.
Well, via my RSS feed, Andy Serkis (the man of a million digital faces) is on board to direct an adaptation of this very production in the future. According to the Hollywood Reporter this will be
his first film from his London-based performance-capture studio The Imaginarium.
As most of us Hobbit geeks know by now:
Serkis grew his experience as a storyteller and director — Jackson asked him to serve as second-unit director on The Hobbit, and he spent about 200 days directing that production — and gained a keen understanding of emerging performance-capture tools and techniques.
Aside from Animal Farm, The Imaginarium,
a London-based performance-capture studio that Serkis and producer Jonathan Cavendish (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) formed in 2011 […] has secured the film rights to adapt Animal Farm, as well as Samantha Shannon’s book series The Bone Season.
Aside from producing and directing
Serkis also is expected to perform in the film
Knowing the story of Animal Farm and that it is Serkis’ preference to keep the film “family friendly”, I am intrigued to find out what he has in store for the world down the road. Depending on how Animal Farm would fare would help determine the course that this new production group would take on the road of hopeful success.
From their website:
The Imaginarium harnesses the power of Performance Capture to fuel a new generation of storytelling in film, television and videogames. We bring life to characters in ways that their creators and their audiences alike could previously only dream of.
The studio is the brain-child of Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish, who joined forces in 2009 to pursue their vision of combining an integrated Performance Capture facility with a cutting edge development and production studio.
The Imaginarium opened its doors in 2011 and has already provided Performance Capture services for major international films – most recently Rise of the Planet of the Apes. We are also developing a wide range of our own film & television projects, games and other digital applications.
The Imaginarium’s central London studio base acts as a magnet to the international film community as well as providing a development and production base for writers, filmmakers and creatives from all over the world.
Well I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the journey and progression in this next step in film making and storytelling.