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"Disney to Do 'Animal Farm'"
From: steve-b@access5.digex.net (Steve Brinich)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.disney.animation,alt.disney
Subject: Next Disney Animated Adaptation
Date: 1 Apr 1998 14:11:06 -0500
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  01 APRIL 1998 -- Disney's next classic animated adaptation will
be based on George Orwell's _Animal Farm_, the studio revealed
today.

  What little information is available about the plot indicates that
the story will center on the conflict between the self-governing
animals of the farm and Mr. Whirligig (voiced by G. Gordon Liddy),
owner of the local power company.  Whirligig's main goal is to sabotage
and destroy the farm's environmentally conscious windmill project,
which represents a threat to his company's profit-gouging.

  Toward this end, Whirligig and his henchmen stir up trouble on
Animal Farm, hoping to set the animals at one another's throats.
Just as matters reach the boiling point, a pig named Snowball
(voiced by Penn Jillette), who had been framed and driven into exile,
returns with evidence of the scheme, leading to a quick reconciliation
and a race against time to stop Whirligig from selling a horse named
Boxer (voiced by Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens) to the glue boiler.

  The studio plans to have the feature ready for Christmas release,
using "a variety of innovative time-saving techniques," according to
our sources.  For example, Whirligig's anti-environmentalist rants
and exhortations to his henchmen to fire "head shots" in their raid
on Animal Farm were taken from existing tapes of Liddy's talk radio
show.

  As usual in Disney productions, the film will feature several
musical numbers.  Words to the one song provided in full in Orwell's
book ("Beasts of England") have reportedly been set to music by
Enya; song excerpts from the book are being expanded by the
scriptwriters.

  "We are committed to authenticity," one studio source commented.
"It is our hope and belief that this project will follow in the
footsteps of Disney's _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_."