Now that Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise is over, Gary Oldman’s schedule noticeably appears lighter to take on more movie franchise roles. He’s already due for a big part in Jose Padilha’s RoboCop reboot next year and now Coming Soon report that the acting chameleon has just been added to the cast of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
Oldman will play the leader of a human colony, likely the bad-guy in the movie.
Set 15 years after Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel finds humanity devastated and almost wiped out by the killer virus we saw spreading at the end of the last movie and the onslaught of the ape war. It’s speculated that this follow-up focuses on a small band of San Francisco scientists that are forming a resistant against the apes, and also returns to Caesar’s story as, like his namesake, he tries to maintain order and power in his new civilization.
Andy Serkis is back to motion capture Caesar, though James Franco or Freida Pinto won’t be returning from the original. Recent reports suggest Jason Clarke and Kodi Smit-McPhee are two of the main cast for this sequel – new director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) bringing the latter over from his Hollywood remake of the Swedish vampire horror.
Mark Bomback (Total Recall) has wrote the screenplay and if you ask us, Reeves has a HUGE job on his hands to live up to the surprisingly great original and the work Rupert Wyatt did on it. A massive shame we won’t be able to see what he would have done with another, and also what Scott Z. Burns (Contagion) ultimately rejected script would have played out.
Filming is due in just a few weeks on the sequel, which will hit theatres May 23rd, 2014.
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2 Comments
It’s hard to get away from the notion that this film will be equal parts Apes sequel and ‘of the Dead’ parody. I’ll be as happy as I am disappointed when the humans wind up fighting for their lives in a shopping mall.
I’m disappointed with the route they’re going down for this film. I really enjoyed the last one, and would really have liked them to keep on the original director and cast. The fact that it’s set 15 years into the future too tells me that there’s going to be very little connection to the first film.
But saying that, Andy Serkis is an absolute genius so I’ll still watch it. And the fact that Gary Oldman is now signed on is fantastic news. Massive fan of his.
I read an interview with him saying that one of the reasons he was doing the Batman and Harry Potter films was because he was tired of playing bad guys. My favourite role of his is in Leon, so if he plays a bad guy in Apes I’d be even more intrigued.