While Andy Serkis first rose to prominence as the actor who brought The Lord of the Rings’ Gollum to life by way of motion-capture, he’s been dabbling a bit more behind-the-scenes as of late.  Serkis acted as the second-unit director on a good deal of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, and he’s poised to make his feature directorial debut on a motion-capture adaptation of George Orwell’s classic novel Animal Farm.  The project was first announced over a year ago, but now Serkis has provided an update on the film, revealing that filming is slated to get underway in 2014.  Hit the jump for more.

Speaking with ScreenDaily (via Twitch), Serkis revealed that “principal photography will take place in the middle to third quarter of next year.”  The film is being produced by Serkis’ performance capture studio Imaginarium, marking their first feature film.  The multi-talented performer went on to talk a bit about his approach to Animal Farm:

“What we’re trying to do is fairly unique. It’s going to be entirely performance captured, so rather than photographing real animals and showing them with talking mouths, it will all be generated by the interaction between the actors playing those roles…the physicality and facial expressions of all the animals will come directly from actors’ performances.”

He added that he has “a great cast” finalized but he couldn’t reveal it just yet.  As for his studio’s other film, The Bone Season, Serkis said they’re currently in the process of looking for writers and directors.  The actor will next be seen in front of the camera as the star of next summer’s sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.