Noah Director Darren Aronofsky Tells Peta Why He Filled His Ark with CGI Animals

If there is one thing you can be sure of seeing in a film about Noah's ark, it is water. If there are two things you can be sure of seeing, it is water and animals. Lots of animals.

Animal rights charity Peta recently sat down with Darren Aronofsky, director of forthcoming biblical epic Noah starring Russell Crowe as the titular God-aided sailor.

Aronofsky has been open about the film's conservationist and environmentalist message before, but here he tells Peta of the his experiences working with animals in films and why he chose to fill his ark with CGI animals.

"When you're doing Noah's ark, of course you're going to be dealing with animals – that's the whole story", the Black Swan director says. "Immediately, it would be very questionable to start taking sentient creatures and sticking them on a set... It's kind of against the actual themes of the film."

He later says that the use of computer generated animals make Noah "undoubtedly a more realistic, truthful film ... because we were able to create our own animal kingdom".

While making his 2006 film The Fountain, Aronofsky worked with numerous live primates, with the director saying he was "pretty alarmed with the condition that they were being kept in".

"Many people over the years in films have tried to mix all kinds of animals in the animal kingdom and the results were usually disastrous," he continued. "There's really no reason to do it any more because the technology has arrived."

He goes on to cite Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Avatar as prime examples that "you can pretty much bring anything to life".

Noah will be released on 4 April.