20th Century Studios’ ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ will be directed by Wes Ball.
After months of almost total secrecy, 20th Century Studios made a big announcement about the next ‘Planet of the Apes’ movie today.
We now know that it’s called ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’, and that the cameras will start rolling next month.
And with Owen Teaguecast as the central simian last month, the cast is now expanding to include ‘The Witcher’s Freya Allen and ‘The Orville’s Peter Macon, though we don’t know what they’re playing yet.
It’s no surprise that Disney would view the ‘Apes’ films as an important asset in its stable – originally adapted from Pierre Boulle’s novel, the 1968 original film featured Charlton Heston as astronaut George Taylor, who crash lands on a mysterious planet where intelligent apes rule and savage humans are their slaves.
That movie ends with one of the biggest and most famous twists in science fiction history (spoiler alert for those who have not watched it and somehow don’t know): the planet is Earth in the far future, where mankind has ruined civilization and apes have risen to dominate.
‘Planet of the Apes’ was a big hit, spawning a franchise of several follow-up films and a TV series.
1968’s ‘Planet of the Apes.’
In 2011, Fox started charting how humans fell with ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ directed by Rupert Wyatt, which switched the origin for mankind’s problems to a virus spreading across the globe. Andy Serkis donned performance capture gear to play main ape Caesar.
Matt Reeves took over the franchise and moved it to even more success with ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ and ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’, which continued Caesar’s story.
‘The Maze Runner’ director Wes Ball landed the job of handling the next film in the series, and since jumping aboard in 2019, he’s been writing the script and figuring out how to follow in Matt Reeves’ footsteps, working with VFX experts to design the various ape characters and more.
Screenplay-wise, Ball has ‘War of the Worlds’ Josh Friedman (who more recently worked on a little movie called ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’), ‘Prey’s Patrick Aison and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (the writers behind ‘Rise’ and ‘Dawn’ from the most recent trilogy) on hand. The story this time turns the clock forward to years after the time of Andy Serkis’ Caesar.
“‘Planet of the Apes’ is one of the most iconic and storied science fiction franchises in film history, as well as being an indelible part of our studio’s legacy,” says 20th Century president Steve Asbell. “With ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ we are privileged to continue the series’ tradition of imaginative, thought-provoking cinema, and can’t wait to share Wes’ extraordinary vision for this new chapter with audiences in 2024.”
So… yes. The ‘Apes’ world will be back in a couple of years.
Andy Serkis as Caesar in 2011’s ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes.’
