There's been a lot of talk recently about the direction in which the Planet Of The Apes franchise will be going, and a lot of that talk has been about just how and when the original 1968 film will fit in. The original blueprint for Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes would have seen the series make a huge leap from the ending of 2011's Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes straight to a time and place that seemed like a midway point between what we'd just seen and what was to come. However, Matt Reeves wanted to take a slower, more Caesar-centric approach to the future, and now we've gotten our first clue just what all of this is possibly leading up to: we might be getting another re-imagined version of the 1968 classic.
Creative Screenwriting recently spoke with Mark Bomback, the man who's pretty much the mind behind the current run of Planet Of The Apes films, and he had some specific issues with the original science fiction classic. Issues that he and Matt Reeves look to avoid with their new rebranding of the series, as seen in his remarks below.
If you look at how the original franchise explains how we arrived at that, it’s a crazy time travel conceit where two apes from Planet of the Apes traveled back in time to the present, had a child who could speak, and then started the revolution that eventually created themselves, sort of a chicken and the egg conundrum. Ours shows very clearly that Caesar is where it all began.
Admittedly, the time travel aspect of the original Planet Of The Apes sequence could be written off as a product of its times. But with the brand new evolution of both apes and story, so many new storytelling possibilities have opened up to get the audience to what used to be the beginning of the story.
The article also mentions that the Icarus launch in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes was the idea of screenwriters Rick Jaffe and Amanda Silver – the two credited writers with Rise's screenplay. However, Mark Bomback was brought on as a script doctor to work the film into its final form, and that work earned him a spot on the fast moving Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes. Since Bomback is a fan of that little reference in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and Matt Reeves keeps talking about how the series will connect to the 1968 classic, it almost sounds like a slam dunk of a case in favor of remaking Planet Of The Apes to fit into the continuity of the newly crafted world.
The next Planet Of The Apes film is still a mystery, but what's not a mystery is that Matt Reeves and Mark Bomback will be writing the film together, and they have a plan. These two creative minds are in no rush to get to the return of the Icarus, and as far as I'm concerned the longer they take to get there, the better. Provided, of course, that they don't run out of interesting stories to tell about Caesar and his legion of apes.
The next Planet Of The Apes sequel is scheduled for July 29, 2016.
