The trailer for Andy Serkis' Animal Farm won't help with your book report

The trailer for Andy Serkis' animated adaptation of Animal Farm gets stranger as it goes.

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  December 12, 2025 | 2:28pm
Screenshot: YouTube
Film News Andy Serkis
The trailer for Andy Serkis' Animal Farm won't help with your book report

We don’t doubt that Andy Serkis made his animated adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm with the best of intentions, a love of the novel, and a belief that the author’s allegorical take on the Russian Revolution might be of service at a time of intense political strife and media illiteracy. After all, Orwell’s book has been adapted only twice: once by the CIA in 1954 and in a 1999 TV movie starring Kelsey Grammer. Providing eighth graders who can’t bring themselves to read the book with an alternative to ChatGPT for their book-report needs might be just the thing to help Gen Alpha learn about metaphor, allegory, and the ills of Stalinism. English teachers have introduced Orwell to kids through Animal Farm for decades—why can’t the man who introduced Venom to queer liberation do the same? But we’d be lying if we expected the trailer for Serkis’ first animated feature to rely more on Minions-inspired gags than, say, the motion-capture performances that the director made his name on.

In its defense, even as Portugal the Man’s “Feel It Still” blares over the soundtrack, we can see the bones of Orwell’s novella within the updates. The pigs reject slaughter, run off their farmer, and briefly find peace in a utopian vision of collectivized farming. This self-described “cautionary tale” lays out the commandments of Animalism (“four legs good, two legs bad”; “All animals are equal”). The jokes are weak, but we can imagine a child being amused by Seth Rogen’s Napoleon the pig, presenting his pig butt and saying, “Look at this deliciousness. They want this.”  What child wouldn’t find a butt funny? But by the emergence of the first human characters, all dressed in the drab, pastel athleisure of the Kardashians, it’s clear that Serkis didn’t have the time or budget to achieve what he hoped. The reveal that this story takes place in a far-off Blade Runner-esque future in which Freida Pilkington (Glenn Close), the CEO of Pilkington farms, will probably give Orwell purists a heart attack.

The movie was written by Serkis and Nicholas Stoller (and very much the self-parody of Nicholas Stoller from The Studio). It also boasts an Illumination-worthy voice cast of name performers, including Rogen, Close, Woody Harrelson, Kieran Culkin, Gaten Matarazzo, Laverne Cox, Jim Parsons, Iman Vellani, and Kathleen Turner.

The film is getting a wide release from Angel Studios, the Utah-based distributor best known for faith-based, inspirational true stories, cheaply animated bible tales, and the controversial human-trafficking hit The Sound Of Freedom. It’s due in theaters on May 1, 2026.

 
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