I just went to IMDB for two minutes to look at the cast of Animal Farm, and this is what happened… Spending hours reading through the history of clandestine CIA programs to fund, edit and influence commercial films throughout the history of Hollywood. Did you know Touchstone Pictures is a shell operation of the Agency? These aren’t conspiracies either. This is ‘on the books’ so to speak…

“The CIA didn’t just offer guidance to film-makers, however. It even offered money. In 1950, the agency bought the rights to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and then funded the 1954 British animated version of the film. Its involvement had long been rumoured, but only in the past decade have those rumours been substantiated.”

The Guardian - Body of Lies: The CIA’s involvement in US film-making

“Although the main objective of Operation Mockingbird was to influence the production of commercial films the CIA also occasionally initiated film projects. The best documented instance of this concerns an animated version of Animal Farm, a satirical allegory about Stalinism by George Orwell. The book was highly popular when it was published in 1945 and it was only natural that the studios should be interested in making a film of the book. The problem for the CIA was that Orwell was a socialist whose book attacked both communism and capitalism. Therefore, it was important to make a film that restricted it to a condemnation of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.”

Spartacus Educational - Operation Mockingbird