THE PLANET OF THE APES franchise is one of my all-time favourites; everything from the original films all the way up to WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, so I'm obviously down for the next stage of the franchise, which is now in the hands of Disney. THE MAZE RUNNER director Wes Ball is slated to take the helm of the new Planet of the Apes film series, and he recently spoke with Discussing Film to say that although the film will be charting its own course, it will still honor the original films, particularly the recent trilogy.
"What do you do for a Planet of the Apes sequel?" Ball said. "One, those last three movies are one of the great trilogies we have in modern movie history. They are just so well done. They honored the original movies they sprang from, the Charlton Heston movies, but they grounded it in a modern sensibility and it just worked. Caesar is one of the great movie characters that we’ll have throughout time. So what do you do to follow that up, right? At the same time, I wasn’t interested in doing a part four either. We want to also do our own thing." Ball continued, saying that they "have a way of staying in the universe that was created before us, but we’re also opening ourselves up in being able to do some really cool new stuff." If I had to guess, I would imagine that Wes Ball will be moving the story into the future, perhaps even so far that Caesar and his actions have taken on a form of mythology/religion for the new generation of apes.
I’ll say this, for fans of the original three don’t worry – you’re in good hands. The original writers and producers that came up with Rise and Dawn, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, they’re also on board with this. Josh Friedman is writing this thing, a lot of the same crew is kind of involved. We will feel like we’re part of that original trilogy, but at the same time we’re able to do some really cool new stuff. It will be really exciting to see on the biggest screen possible.
Given that much of Hollywood remains shut down due to COVID-19, there's no word on when production on this new PLANET OF THE APES film will get underway, but Wes Ball said that the art team is busy working on some "incredible concept art" and that because it will largely be a CG movie, they could actually be in virtual production sooner rather than later.