Andy Serkis wants to keep his Animal Farm adaptation full of "innocence" to balance the book's darkness.

The 58-year-old actor and filmmaker is set to helm an animated take on George Orwell's dystopian fable - which tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human owner in the hope of creating a society where they can be free and equal.

He has now told Variety about why he chose animation as the format to tell the tale: "We started to work on it and did a lot of experimenting, which led us to realize that animation was the right medium for this adaptation.

"That allowed us to keep the innocence of the storytelling that the original book had, while being able to say much more than live action would allow us to do. "In live action, such a story would necessarily have been darker from the outset. Whereas with an animated movie, breaking those ties with reality and keeping Orwell's book, which he described as a fairy tale, in that realm gave us much more freedom to still have emotional engagement with the characters, keep it innocent, and then progressively let the darker themes come in underneath that."

Andy added when asked what value the fable has in the context of today's troubled times: "To really remember that truth is something to be valued. Honesty, selflessness as well.

"We have all become self-driven, and I think it's worth reminding ourselves that there is satisfaction to be had in working not for yourself but for the benefit of others.

"That all sounds very woolly and, in a way, utopian. But I do think that there are certain core human values that are slipping away, and I think that our story somehow questions that."

Nicholas Stoller has adapted the screenplay for Andy's long-awaited movie, which had previously been set up at Netflix, and will produce with Adam Nagle, Dave Rosenbaum and Jonathan Cavendish.

Adam said in a statement announcing the project was underway: "Ever since 1945, when George Orwell first published Animal Farm, the story has remained relevant and a key instrument in understanding how the world works."