Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Director Reveals Original Title, Says Doors Are Open for Trilogy Plans

The upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the tenth movie in the long-running franchise, and it won’t be the last. Director Wes Ball previously teased that the new film was intended to be the start of a new trilogy of movies. As franchise fans will know, movies of this size take time, and the Caesar trilogy all had three years in-between each new chapter. Speaking with ComicBook in a new interview, we asked Ball how quickly the timeline could look for the follow-up to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, with the filmmaker confirming that there’s a major hurdle that would keep him from immediately jumping into work on the sequel, and it’s something Hollywood could fix all around.

“It’ll take as long as it takes,” Ball revealed. “Fortunately because this franchise is important to the studio we’ll get it right like we did this one, took our time and got it right. Hopefully, people think that…It takes time, the development itself and my big thing is I do not want to go into prep when the script is not done. I’ve had to do that in the past. Nothing good comes from that. That’s one of the biggest things that movies could be doing right now is to stop doing that. We’d save a ton of money… I think on this one that we are in a good, good shape. Fortunately, we were thinking a lot about these questions when we were developing this script, so we have an idea where we wanna go and there’s lots of room for great drama. Literally doors have opened at the end of this movie that hopefully reveal a much larger world that we get to explore in this movie, full of drama, full of conflict, all that kind of stuff. Fingers crossed. We’ll see.”

When asked a follow-up of how many more words can appear ahead of “of the Planet of the Apes” in a film’s title, Ball joked, “None…It is hard to come up with these movies. But for anyone out there, there’s no of the, of the, of the, it’s just two “of the”s or “for the,” it’s just one word of the planet of the Apes. That’s the way the titles work, it has since 19 freaking 70.”

Ball then offered the extra anecdote about his first title for the film, adding, “Empire of the Planet of the Apes. That was my original title, we couldn’t do it, we just couldn’t.”

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Cast

The cast for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is anchored by Owen Teague (IT) as Noa, a young chimpanzee. He’s joined in the film by Kevin Duran (Locke & Key) as Proximus Caesar, a powerful chieftan that has appropriated human technology; Travis Jeffery as Anaya; Lydia Peckham as Soona, a female chimpanzee and a friend of Noa. Neil Sandilands as Koro; Peter Macon as Raka; and Freya Allan (The Witcher) as Mae, one of the few human characters to appear in the movie  

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is directed by Wes Ball and written by Josh Friedman and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Patrick Aison.

Director Wes Ball breathes new life into the global, epic franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.   

Planet of the Apes movie order explained

With the upcoming release of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes there will officially be eleven movies in the Planet of the Apes franchise including:

• Planet of the Apes (1968)
• Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
• Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
• Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
• Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
• Planet of the Apes (2001) – Tim Burton’s standalone remake
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
• War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Though allusions to the classic movies released in the 1960s and 1970s can be found in all of the modern Planet of the Apes movies, fans eager to dive into the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes likely only need to watch th three movies made in the 2010s ahead of the film’s release.