‘We’re Gonna Grow A New Tree To Climb’: Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Director Talks Building Out A New Saga Set Centuries After Caesar’s Death
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Andy Serkis’ Caesar died at the end of 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes, but he’s hardly forgotten in the forthcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. While we’ve known for a while that this next installment in the long-running franchise takes place a significant amount of time after War rather than picking up immediately afterwards, but now it’s been clarified that we’re talking centuries later. Additionally, director Wes Ball has opened up how the plan is for Kingdom to launch a new trilogy set within this reboot timeline.
Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Is Intended To Launch A New Era
As shared by Empire, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set roughly 300 years after War for the Planet of the Apes. As seen in the first Kingdom trailer, this is a time when apes have ruled the Earth for a long time and the remnants of humanity have reverted to a feral state, thus making this 2024 movie release serve as an interesting middle ground between the trilogy launched by Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011 and the world depicted in the original Planet of the Apes. But as Ball told Empire, not only is Kingdom meant to be “its own beast,” he intends for this story focused on Owen Teague’s Noa to stretch across multiple movies rather than just be a one-and-done affair.
From the beginning we thought about this as a trilogy. We had these grand ideas of where it could ultimately go and how it could fit into the legacy of these movies. So I’m certainly talking to [the studio] right now about the next story... Those last three movies were about the end of something. They were about the end of this Moses story. They were about the end of humanity. And we thought, ‘From the ashes of those previous movies, we’re gonna grow a new tree to climb.’ This movie is very much about the beginning of something.
To be clear, it’s not a done deal that Kingdom will be followed by two sequels, as no doubt Disney, 20th Century Studios’ parent company, is looking to see how this movie does critically or commercially before making such a decision. Still, one can’t fault Ball and his collaborators for thinking big, and there’s enough real estate in this rebooted continuity to keep it going for a long time. So while Rise, Dawn and War chronicled the fall of humanity and the first steps these enhanced apes took to building a new life, Kingdom and its potential sequels would chronicle the fleshing out of this society.
Caesar’s Teachings Have Largely Been Forgotten After 300 Years
While the apes of Noa’s time may remember Caesar as a historical figure, most of them are unaware of his specific teachings and leadership qualities. One of the new exceptions is Kevin Durand’s Proximus Caesar, the main antagonist in the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes cast. Here’s what Durand had to say about how Proximus is manipulating the lessons Caesar left behind for his own benefit:
Caesar is almost a religious figure, and Proximus has taken on the name Caesar because it was the highest position held in ape society. It was a self-proclamation that was achieved by any means necessary, to ensure that apes continue to evolve. So you’re seeing the influence and the evolution of what Caesar left. And, like in every morsel of human history, there’s always some type of tyrant who comes along and scares everyone into believing them.
This Empire article also noted that Noa starts off Kingdom being completely unaware of Caesar’s legacy, but the journey he goes on will require him to, as Teague put it, discover “its many interpretations” and “make sense of what it all means.” Naturally that’ll lead to a clash between him and Proximus, though if the latter is defeated by the end of Kingdom, that then begs the question of what challenges would await Noa in the sequels.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes opens in theaters on May 24, 2024, and its lineup of actors also includes Freya Allan, Peter Macon and William H. Macy, among others. If you’d like to stream any of the previous three Apes movies, Rise and War can both be accessed with a Hulu subscription, though you’ll need a Live TV add-on to view the latter, and Max subscribers can watch Dawn.
