Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Director Teases New Trilogy, Next Movie Discussions

Summary

• Director Wes Ball confirms that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the start of a new trilogy in the franchise.
• The movie introduces a new character, Noa, a young chimpanzee who joins forces with a feral human to stop a tyrannical ape leader.
• Ball and producer Joe Hartwick Jr. had always planned for this movie to be the first chapter in a new trilogy and are currently discussing the next story with the studio.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes director Wes Ball confirms that his movie is intended to be the start of a new trilogy in the long-running franchise. Following on from the rebooted continuity that began with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Ball’s own movie is set generations after Andy Serkis’ Caesar led his kind toward becoming the predominant species on Earth. Currently slated for a May 2024 release, the new Apes movie will instead introduce Owen Teague’s Noa, a young chimpanzee who embarks on a perilous journey with the feral human Mae (Freya Allan) to stop the tyrannical ape leader Proximus Caesar.

Speaking with Empire, Ball and producer Joe Hartwick Jr. have revealed that their plans were always for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes to be the first chapter in a new trilogy of films. While Ball is unsure if he will continue to helm future installments directly, he did reveal that he is currently talking to the studio “about the next story.” The director also suggested that while the previous trilogy was about “the end of humanity,” his next chapter is “very much about the beginning of something.” Check out his comments below:

From the beginning we thought about this as a trilogy. We had these grand ideas where it could ultimately go and how is could fit into the legacy of these movies. So I’m certainly talking to [the studio] right now about the next story.

The last three movies were about the end of something. They were about the end of this Moses story. They were about the end of humanity. And we thought ‘From the ashes of those previous movies, we’re gonna grow a new tree to climb.’ This movie is very much about the beginning of something.

How Planet Of The Apes Could Borrow The Structure Of Another Sci-Fi Classic

While it is not entirely clear whether the current Planet of the Apes movies intend to come full circle and establish the world first introduced to audiences in 1968, there is still a great deal of potential ground left for the franchise to cover. With the events of the original movie taking place in the year 3978, there are potentially several centuries worth of stories left for Ball and other filmmakers to cover between the near future of the rebooted Apes trilogy and the original movies.

Though it is likely that the franchise’s next trilogy, beginning with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, will potentially continue to focus on Teague’s Noa in much the same way the previous movies centered on Serkis’ Caesar, there is still plenty of room left for even more films yet to come. With Ball’s movie jumping forward several generations in the Planet of the Apes timeline, when his new trilogy comes to an end, there is the potential for other filmmakers to come in and repeat the same kind of narrative leap.

Ideally, The Planet of the Apes franchise may even look to borrow the kind of structure made famous by the Star Wars movies and eventually seek to establish a trilogy of trilogies, with each group of movies set generations apart from one another. As one of the world’s longest-lived and most beloved science fiction properties, there would certainly be widespread interest in its ongoing continuation beyond Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and its next two sequels.

Source: Empire