Eh. Ok.
The latest news out of the Mouse House is that Planet of the Apes, a series “reimagined” from the Charlton Heston led film in the 1960’s and the Tim Burton-directed nightmare in the early 2000’s, is about to be rebooted one more time.
Yes, it already was once already, by Matt Reeves, he the current director of the Batman reboot, who took the helm on 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes, which ended with Caesar, the hero liberation monkey, dying.
Spoiler alert.
From the trades:
Planet of the Apes is about to be one of the first Fox properties to get a new lease on life under new Disney ownership, with Maze Runner helmer Wes Ball tapped to develop and direct. But here’s what’s unclear: no one is saying whether or not this is a whole new reboot of the franchise, or if it’s going to tie into the recent trilogy starring Andy Serkis as advanced ape revolutionary Caesar.
Third time’s a charm, I guess.
One More Time Around for the Banana Eaters
The original Planet of the Apes, from a script written by Rod Serling, launched a series of films in the 60’s and 70’s as well as a television series and an animated series.
The last triad of films was critically acclaimed and grossed a total of $1,683,100.00 worldwide, which makes it a pretty rich property for Disney to milk in the future out of the many 20th Century Fox film franchises and properties they acquired when they bought 20th Century Fox film studios.
And then there’s the pliable new director the Mouse House is tapping, Wes Ball.
From the trades:
Ball’s Maze Runner trilogy, set in its own dystopian future, grossed almost $1 billion worldwide while being produced on modest budgets. The filmmaker was due to tackle a pricey and special effects-heavy adaptation of Boom! Comics’ Mouse Guard before that project was shelved by Disney earlier this year.
I smell a Jon Favreau clone here folks.
The Mouse House Strikes Again
Once again, Disney gets to strip mine properties that it now owns for its own fun and profit.
This means, that we won’t get a great script — as we got with Rod Serling in the original film — instead, we’ll get some regurgitated pablum that will resemble the original film but will have none of the magic.
And as for the “twist” that it was Earth all along in the original film, or that the apes win in the end and humanity loses, as in the most current reboot from the former Fox Studios?
We won’t get either of those, which if we did would actually be a relief.
Instead, we should be looking for something that resembles the current “reimagining” that Disney is doing of its formerly animated properties that somehow manage to draw audiences in and then, somehow, generate billion-dollar worldwide grosses for the Mouse House.
Sound off below.
