Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Is Adventure Film With ‘A Little Bit of Star Wars,’ Director Reveals

Summary

• Director Wes Ball aims to bring a little bit of Star Wars into the upcoming Planet of the Apes sequel, blending adventure with a grounded and quest-like narrative.
• The lead character, Noa, is not the son of Caesar as previously assumed, but a young chimpanzee born generations later, adding a new dynamic to the story.
• While the film has a younger spirit, Ball ensures that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes hasn’t been “Disneyfied” and maintains its realism.

Director Wes Ball has teased the tone of the upcoming sci-fi sequel, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, with a new image of the lead ape (played by Owen Teague) also being released. Speaking with Empire Magazine, Ball has called his Planet of the Apes follow-up an adventure movie mixed with “a little bit of Star Wars.” See what the director had to say below.

“When I first started on it, I said, ‘I feel like Apes needs a little bit of Star Wars.’ It’s all still very grounded in reality, but it is essentially a quest narrative. Our main character – the young, impressionable Noa [Owen Teague] – meets characters along the way and becomes awakened as he winds up in a place that will test him, and he ultimately becomes his true self.”

Not only does Ball reveal his approach to the long-running franchise, he also reveals that the lead character is not the son of Caesar as many had assumed, but is instead a young chimpanzee born generations later named Noa.

While Ball used Star Wars as a guide, he promises that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has not been “Disneyfied.”

“We haven’t kiddified it, or Disneyfied it, if I’m allowed to say that! But we have brought a younger spirit to it.”

20th Century Studios/Empire

RELATED: Why Continuing the Planet of the Apes Franchise Is Actually a Good Idea

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Picks up After ‘A Big Leap Forward in Time’

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Release Date May 24, 2024

Director Wes Ball

Cast Freya Allan, Dichen Lachman, Kevin Durand, Owen Teague, William H. Macy, Peter Macon

Main Genre Action

Writers Patrick Aison, Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa

Ball went on to reveal more about the setting of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, revealing that the latest sequel will take “a big leap forward in time.”

“I wanted to do a big leap forward in time. It’s significant enough that Caesar is still a spirit in the movie, but most of his living relatives are not in this picture. If the last three movies were the Stone Age, here we get to see what happens when they enter the Bronze Age.”

While Ball has now revealed that the main character in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is named Noa, and is therefore not Cornelius the son of Caesar, it is of course possible that this is all a ruse, and that Noa will discover he is in fact Cornelius (or an ancestor of Caesar) and thus must continue the legacy of the great ape leader.

Directed by Wes Ball from a screenplay by Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, and Patrick Aison, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes stars Owen Teague alongside Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, and William H. Macy. The movie will follow on from the events depicted in the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy, which came to an end in 2017 with the critically acclaimed War for the Planet of the Apes.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is scheduled to be released by 20th Century Studios on May 24, 2024. Check out the recently released first trailer for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes below:

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