Are you ready to go bananas for this next bit of news? 20th Century Fox sure hopes so, because it’s recently been confirmed that the studio, under its Disney umbrella, has a new Planet of the Apes movie in early development. Looking to helm the next iteration of the Apes franchise is MAZE RUNNER film series director Wes Ball.
Based on Pierre Boule’s French novel of the same name, Planet of the Apes beat its chest to five films, beginning in 1968 with director Franklin J. Schaffner’s live-action adaptation. Before long, viewers had gone ape for Schaffner’s film, and characters from the series found their way onto toy store shelves. In 2001, Tim Burton rebooted the property with a one-off feature that starred Mark Wahlberg as Captain Leo Davidson and Helena Bonham Carter as Ari a central character in the film and daughter of Senator Sandar, a high-ranking member of the Ape Senate. Burton’s take on the Apes franchise earned $362.1 million bananas at the worldwide box office, but failed to inspire any sequels. However, in 2011, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES starring motion-capture master Andy Serkis hit the mark, and paved the way for two sequels from director Matt Reeves – DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2014) and its sequel, WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (2017). All told, the trilogy banked $1.68 billion in global returns.
For the moment, Deadline is saying that Ball’s Planet of the Apes project is still in its very early days of development, so it might be a while before we hear of any significant updates.
What do you think about the idea of Fox giving the Apes franchise another go? Has it been long enough since Reeves’ take to warrant another pass at the property’s rise of a simian-based society? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.