Neon Lands George Orwell Doc From Raoul Peck, Alex Gibney

Neon has landed the North American rights to Orwell, the Raoul Peck- directed doc about the 1984 author.

The doc, which has the cooperation of the Orwell Estate and is currently in production, will tell the story of the English novelist who is known for his satirical and outright critiques of authoritarianism as seen in his two most famous works: Animal Farm and 1984.

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Peck earned acclaim for his feature documentary that centered on the works of another author, James Baldwin, with 2016’s I Am Not Your Negro, which earned an Oscar nomination.

Alex Gibney produced the doc via his Jigsaw Productions, along with Peck for Velvet Films and Nick Shumaker for Anonymous Content. Stacey Offman, Richard Perello, Zhang Xin, Joey Marra, William Horberg, Jessica Grimshaw, Dawn Olmstead and David Levine, along with Participant’s Jeff Skoll and Courtney Sexton and Universal’s Johnny Fewings will executive produce.

“’Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past…,’ wrote Orwell in his novel, 1984. Today, the “newspeak” of authoritarian rule is alive and well and in unexpected places, from the rise of AI Chatbot to the Russian propaganda machine, from the marketing webs of commercial metaverses to the political banning of books in the Southern United States” said Peck.

Neon has a strong track record with doc features, having released two of this year’s Academy Award nominees for best doc feature: Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and Fire of Love.

AC Independent negotiated on behalf of the filmmakers. Peck is represented by Range Media Partners and Del Shaw

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