Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes director Wes Ball explains why he wanted to make the latest Apes installment more than just another sequel.
“I was looking for what to do next after I had a previous movie called Mouse Guard that crashed and burned. We were just about to make it, and I was making it with Matt Reeves at Fox. We were licking our wounds from that thing, and someone came and asked, “What would you do with the next Planet of the Apes? You just learned all this big mo-cap stuff, and you’re friends with Matt. What would you do,” Ball said during an appearance on Collider‘s Directors on Directing panel at WonderCon.
“Actually, I was a little hesitant at first, to be honest, and then I had this idea. What I was worried about was if it was a straight part four, a direct sequel, it somehow felt unnecessary. It was sort of unimaginative in a way. It felt like it would be unfairly sort of compared to that perfect trilogy that came previously in the last 10 years.”
The previous Apes trilogy that began with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes followed chimpanzee Caesar (Andy Serkis), who began as Will Rodman’s (James Franco) test subject for the ALZ-112 Alzheimer’s cure — and evolved into the leader of ape escapees from a San Francisco primate center. 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes (both directed by Reeves) saw Caesar raise a family and his various conflicts with the remnants of the human race. Ball sought inspiration from the original 1968 classic to find a fresh perspective on Kingdom’s story.
“We came up with this idea to stay in the same universe,” Ball added. “We’re still a part of Caesar’s world, but we’re cutting many, many years later, after the fact, where you get to really explore what’s become of Caesar, what’s become of his legacy, his ideas. Also, on the same level of the Apes thing, there’s this 1968 version that really started everything, which I was a huge fan of when I was a kid. So, could we do this thing where we are both a sequel and a prequel, essentially? We find ourselves sort of in the middle, honoring where we came from with this great reboot that happened with the Caesar trilogy, and start making our way to that ‘68 version where apes are talking and have democracy and all this crazy stuff. So, that was kind of the approach that we took.”
What is Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes about?
The official synopsis for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes reads: “Director Wes Ball breathes new life into the global, epic, franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.”
Owen Teague headlines the latest Apes movie alongside Freya Allan (The Witcher), Peter Macon (The Orville), Eka Darville (Marvel’s Jessica Jones), Kevin Durand (Swamp Thing), Travis Jeffery (Preacher), Neil Sandilands (The Flash), Sara Wiseman (Power Rangers Dino Fury), Lydia Peckham (Cowboy Bebop), Ras-Samuel Welda’abzgi (The Clearing), William H. Macy (Mystery Men), and Dichen Lachman (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.).
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is scheduled for release in theaters on May 10.
