According to an interview with Empire Magazine, director Wes Ball had a pitch for Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes that was deceptively simple: Apocalypto with apes.
An expedition through a dangerous and primitive jungle is just part of this. Once Ball started thinking Apocalypto he says he had “this flood of ideas” and realized he had the opportunity to “set a whole new trajectory”.
The starting point for this new adventure is actually some 300 years after the most recent trilogy. This time, they have moved beyond Casear and this world is seen through the eyes of Owen Teague’s young ape hero Noa. As producer Joe Hartwick says:
“The last couple of movies concerned Caesar’s burden. Much like The Dark Knight, they felt heavy – super-enjoyable, but super-intense. We’re going in a different direction. Noa still has a burden, but it’s wrapped in a different level of adventure, mostly because the character hasn’t been exposed to the outside world before. So we’re seeing him see the world for the first time.”
Scenes in the new movie will include a human-hunt sequence like the 1968 original, a river-rapids chase, and a set-piece among a huge, cataclysmic event described as being on a biblical scale. VFX Supervisor Erik Winquist gives a tease of what to expect when he talks of his experience working on the movie
“It was apparent on the page that this was going to be tricky in a number of instances, where you’ve got wet apes. You start getting into the need to deal with how the water affects the fur and how the fur affects the water. Thankfully we just came off a film called The Way Of Water, so we’ve been able to harness a lot of the experience and the tech that went into that film.”
Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes comes to cinemas from 24th May 2024.
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