Andy Serkis on the 15-year journey to get Animal Farm made, and why Netflix dropped it

The director discusses why his career has focused on re-imagining beloved stories, including rewriting Animal Farm's ending Andy Serkis’ new animated adaptation of George Orwell’s 1945 allegorical classic Animal Farm has been controversial ever since the first trailer dropped in December 2025. Critics who’ve seen the film bridled against its upbeat tone and extended fart joke. Viewers watching the trailer were dubious about comedian Seth Rogen voicing a lead in an adaptation of a notoriously grim allegory about historical totalitarianism. Serkis, though, is adamant that the conversation around the film is “exactly what Orwell would have wanted.” Animal Farm has been a longtime passion project for Serkis, the pioneering mo-cap superstar of the Lord of the Rings and Planet of the Apes franchises, now a producer and director (Venom: Let There Be Carnage; Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle). He’s been developing this movie since 2011, across several studios, including Netflix. Polygon spoke to Serkis about why he felt such a burning need to make this movie, why its anti-propaganda, anti-authoriarian, anti-consumer messages aren’t aimed at any one current administration, and what happened to