Carl Cox expands commercial portfolio with score for UK Animal Farm release
The DJ's contribution to the Andy Serkis-directed film highlights the growing trend of electronic musicians diversifying their revenue streams into intellectual property and film composition.
Electronic music pioneer Carl Cox has composed three original tracks for the UK cinema release of Andy Serkis’s animated adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The film, which hits screens in the UK and Ireland today, marks a continued crossover for the DJ into mainstream film scoring.
Directed by Serkis, the project features voice performances from actors including Seth Rogen, Glenn Close, Woody Harrelson, Steve Buscemi, Gaten Matarazzo, Kieran Culkin and Laverne Cox. Marketed as an animated comedy with an alternative coming-of-age narrative, the film diverges from the strict political allegory of the source material. It premiered in the United States last year to generally unfavourable reviews.
Cox’s contributions to the score include the tracks ‘The Rogues’, ‘Drone Farm’ and ‘My Bunker My Party’. In promotional clips released alongside the launch, Serkis praised the integration of the music at a critical narrative juncture. "We've got your incredible, dancefloor, three-deck wizard magic coming into the story at a brilliant point where everything starts to turn and the pigs take over, and it's just beautiful really," the director said.
Cox, who was awarded an OBE in the King's Birthday Honours List 2026, noted that the creative process was highly collaborative and allowed him artistic freedom. "For me, I think it was quite easy to be able to adapt my music to the messages," he explained. "Because I was left free to be able to create the music, to the ideal of the pieces that I was given and that was fantastic."
This collaboration follows Cox’s previous work on Serkis’s 2021 film Venom: Let There Be Carnage, illustrating how established electronic artists are diversifying their commercial portfolios into film composition. When asked about future scoring opportunities, Cox expressed a willingness to continue, stating: "I would do, because I kind of like the challenge of it." He added: "I'm given a storyboard and it's like, so where do we go with this now?"
