While at the New York Comic-Con, director Matt Reeves and actor Andy Serkis were there to promote footage at a panel for their upcoming Apes sequel War For The Planet of The Apes.
Screen Rant spoke with the two about the future of the franchise, which included Matt Reeves stating this about Caesar’s place in the films. Giving us the impression they could very well move forward in time for future sequels.
It’s all one universe and Caesar has a very important part in ape history. We think of him being the seminal figure in ape history like Moses but as the idea, that tapestry, extends outward, there are all kinds of new characters in this story that you could absolutely follow. It’s really about this trajectory that all of the apes are on, that all of the characters are on, and have been very intentionally centered around Caesar, but the universe is meant to be larger than just him as well.
Serkis was then asked if he’d like play another role when they move past Caesar. He seems very open to the idea and alludes to the franchise moving towards the future setting of the original two movies. This would mean Serkis’ Caesar is long-dead and could explore other plot points from the franchise that haven’t been touched-upon.
That would be an amazing thing to do. It would be an extraordinary thing to do. As Matt [Reeves] has always said, we know the outcome and it’s just how long you want to make from here to there to that outcome. There’s infinite possibilities of carrying on the mythic arc of their journey together.
Matt Reeves adding.
It would be really cool if, in the future, should that ever happen, if Andy wanted to come back and play anything he wanted.
This wouldn’t be strange for the franchise to have an actor playing different leading ape roles.
In the original films, actor Roddy McDowall was the unofficial franchise lead as far as many of us were concerned as he played the role of Cornelius for three movies.
Then, he jumped into the role of Cornelius’ son Caesar for another two sequels, taking more of a commanding lead in the last two films. Conquest of The Planet of The Apes and Battle for The Planet of The Apes have been cited as influencing Rise, Dawn and even War for The Planet of The Apes.
Serkis is talented enough that moving towards playing one of Caesar’s sons, a future ancestor or another ape character wouldn’t be a hard task, as it’s been already established this could happen with Roddy’s jumping to different roles.
What could future installments look like after the events of War For The Planet of The Apes?
Reverting back to the three original installments could be a direction the franchise goes in Planet of The Apes 4, leading to another trilogy if Fox and Matt Reeves were interested in that prospect.
Does that mean thrusting a bunch of human astronauts into the future like in the original film or sending talking apes to the past like Escape From The Planet of The Apes?
That remains to be seen.
I’m curious if audiences would embrace space/time travel, when the series has taken a very light approach to the wacky science fiction angles from the original films.
Another example would be channelling the timeline from the original film. Where surviving humans have been turned into mute slaves over hundreds/thousands of years and cryogenically frozen astronauts sent-off planet during the outbreak and crash-land onto futuristic Earth, where apes have become the dominate overloads of the human, now treated like animals themselves.
Tim Burton’s version of this with his own remake ended-up a disaster of sorts, so we do hope Fox attempts another take eventually.
This could help move away from the virus and the setting of the ruins of the human world. Exploring a futuristic world created by smart apes, that have possibly moved passed some of their primitive side and getting more into the political side of things.
In Beneath The Planet of The Apes, we saw a group of highly evolved mutant humans dwelling underground and worshiping an atomic bomb, who had telekinesis powers that helped them keep apes from discovering their hideout. The powers seemingly came from fallout, it would be interesting if the simian virus had the same affect of humans years after the outbreak.
Of course, this timeline is completely different and it’s own thing, but taking more influence from the original three movies seems like a good way to start another trilogy of films if you ask me.
The bigger question should be will Matt Reeves stick around for three more films?
War For The Planet of The Apes should have it’s trailer dropped sometime soon. It’s release date has been slated for July 14th, 2017.
SOURCE: SCREEN RANT