Are We Ready For More Damn Dirty Apes?

 

If Tim Burton’s 2001 remake didn’t harden your baboon heart against the Planet of the Apes franchise, perhaps this will: Shooting could begin by mid-July on the long-rumored prequel Caesar: Rise of the Apes.

Production Weekly reports the 20th Century Fox production has opened offices at Mammoth Studios outside Vancouver, where Fantastic Four, X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand were filmed.

A remake of 1972′s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes — not the best of the original series, but certainly not the worst — Caesar will chronicle how the Apes, led by a super-intelligent chimpanzee, rebel against their human masters and take over the world. The fourth of the Planet of the Apes films, Conquest was set in near-future 1991 America (portrayed by the campus of the University of California, Irvine), less than a decade after a disease wiped out all cats and dogs, leaving humans to rely on monkeys and apes for companionship and, eventually, slave labor.

Caesar apparently is the “Untitled Planet of the Apes Project” that Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist) has signed on to direct from a script by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (The Relic).