Andy Serkis talks about his continuing career as a director and what the future holds

Last Updated on April 4, 2023

Andy Serkis had a unique breakout performance with his turn as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies. Though his face isn’t actually seen, every nuance of his acting is captured and put up on the screen. He would go on to be the motion capture star for films including King Kong, also directed by Rings director Peter Jackson, as well as the new Planet of the Apes series. After a string of films where Serkis had actually appeared on camera, he also set his sights on working behind the camera.

ComicBook.com reports on Serkis as he discusses what his future in directing holds. In an interview with the mo-cap actor, he expounds that while he does get excited about big franchise projects, he’s interested in telling more intimate and idiosyncratic stories. “I’ve got a whole slate of films that I’ve been developing over the years. Very individual and unique stories that deserve telling and I’m very excited to tell. I also get excited by the big canvas and blockbusters and all the rest of it, but having been recently through the Venom experience, I’m concentrating more on the smaller films that have no less value, but speak in a different way.”

His past credits already include 2017’s Breathe, which is a biographical drama about Robin Cavendish and his struggles with polio, Netflix’s Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, and the recent Venom: Let There Be Carnage. A film that’s next on his slate is a new adaptation of Animal Farm. This will be a new animated drama based on the famed George Orwell novella. This project conflicted with any plans of him returning to direct Venom 3 for Sony. In 2022, Serkis said he had already put it on hold when Venom: Let There Be Carnage came around. “I’ve got so many projects that I was just about to [work on], like Animal Farm for instance. We were just about to go into production with that, and then we delayed as Venom came up. I really have to be very on top of the ones that I’ve been building to do for such a long time.”