Fistly, he played the CGI ape Caesar, next he may portray Napoleon, the pig, not the emperor of France.
Or, put another way, actor-turned-director Andy Serkis is making the leap from J.R.R. Tolkien to George Orwell as motion-capture chameleon plans to use his experience (The Adventures of Tintin, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Hobbit films) to direct a performance-capture based adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel, Animal Farm.
He told THR how plans to mo-cap a farm full of pigs and horses:
I think we found a rather fresh way of looking at it. It is definitely using performance capture but we are using an amalgamation of filming styles to create the environments. We are in proof of concept stage at the moment, designing characters and experimenting on our stage with the designs. It is quite a wide canvas at the moment as to how much and how far we can take performance capture with quadrupeds and how much we will be using facial [capture]. We are not discounting the use of keyframe animation or puppeteering parts of animals. We are in an experimental phase; it's terribly exciting.
And said about story:
We're keeping it fable-istic and [aimed at] a family audience. We are not going to handle the politics in a heavy-handed fashion. It is going to be emotionally centered in a way that I don't think has been seen before. The point of view that we take will be slightly different to how it is normally portrayed and the characters—we are examining this in a new light.
Yes, there's a chance that Serkis will also act in the film.
As you might already know the novel serves as allegory for the rise of communism and details a sociopolitical uprising amongst barnyard animals and there's actually an animated film that was made and you can watch it below.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGSiFESwWtI[/youtube]
