Planet of the Apes star Andy Serkis has come out against the use of wild animals on movie sets.
“The thought of shooting an Apes movie now with real apes is absurd,” Serkis told the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in a video interview posted to YouTube. Besides playing Gollum in The Hobbit, the Hollywood actor is best known for performances in motion-capture films like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of Apes, King Kong and the upcoming The Jungle Book.
Serkis said computer-generated imagery and performance-mapping makes movies like the Planet of the Apes franchise possible without wild animals being made to perform on set. “We’ve matured as an industry and realized that that would be intolerable and cruel,” Serkis insisted.
PETA, which has been calling for the use of computer technology to replace real wild animals in movies, in a statement Tuesday highlighting Serkis‘ comments pointed out that The Revenant, Noah and the Planet of the Apes franchise used digital imagery to create wild animals, and AMC’s The Walking Dead used CGI and animatronics to create the Shiva tiger character in the recent season-seven finale.
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