ANDY KESSLER: Painting Animal Farm Red.

You can’t hate Hollywood enough. Last month a trailer dropped for “Animal Farm: A Cautionary Tail,” an animated retelling of George Orwell’s 1945 book. It stars Seth Rogen and his infectious chuckle as the pig Napoleon. What could go wrong? Everything, it turns out.

Orwell’s original book was an allegory of the Bolshevik Revolution, communism and its inevitable descent into totalitarianism. I read it in high school. You probably did too. The allegory was pretty transparent: Napoleon was Stalin, Snowball was Trotsky, Farmer Jones was Czar Nicholas II, and Old Major was a combination of Lenin and Marx.

Forget all that. While only a trailer is available, the film was reviewed after appearing at a festival last June. Remarkably, instead of Stalin, the antagonist is a tech billionairess who drives a Cybertruck knockoff. Really! She bribes Napoleon with fast cars and credit cards and, as one reviewer put it, her “methods mimic the hostile-takeover techniques of big banks and monopolistic companies.” Hilarity ensues. Yes, capitalism is the villain. Hollywood strikes again.

Variety declares, “George Orwell’s required-reading novella is ripe for reimagining.” C’mon now. Is it? “Humans are inherently piggish,” Variety notes from the film. “Seizing the first opportunity to take more than their share.” Like New York and Seattle mayors, socialism and communism are cool again!

This is a classic Hollywood twisting of stories. Most animations are now antimarriage. I can’t remember a cop movie without dirty cops. This year’s Oscar bait is the beautifully made but irksome anti-border-enforcement film, “One Battle After Another.” Leonardo DiCaprio plays a lovable revolutionary who blows things up. Sean Penn, best remembered as Jeff Spicoli (“All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I’m fine”) in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” is the deranged and perverted Col. Steven J. Lockjaw. Get it? Soldiers bad. Activists good.

Hollywood took note of actress Frances McDormand’s 2018 Oscar acceptance speech calling for an “inclusion rider” to demand diversity in casting and crew. But as OutKick writer Bobby Burack put it about the new “Animal Farm,” “It’s one thing to race-bend, cast genders in illogical roles, send messages about immigration, or make all the white people evil. It’s an entirely different offense when you take a historical piece of art and completely alter its message.” Offensive indeed. Whitewashing. . . . By the way, the release date for the new and depraved “Animal Farm” is May 1, 2026—International Workers’ Day. That day was also celebrated as May Day in the now defunct Soviet Union with parades in Red Square. How Orwellian. How Hollywood.

Well, Hollywood is full of communists, so it’s no surprise they’re making communist propaganda. They’re going broke, but not fast enough.