CAESAR of the Apes has a director

(article co-written by Matt Holmes & Owain Paciuszko) Correct me if I'm being an old fuddy duddy, but SIX Planet of the Apes movies (including one remake/reboot), a 14 episode live action and a separate animated t.v. series, hundreds and hundreds of comic books and novels; isn't it time to let this franchise die? Is there really anything left to be said that hasn't already been said in the man vs. apes saga? Mike Fleming at Deadline reports that Caesar, 20th Century Fox's un-mainstream attempt at resuscitating the franchise (it's kind of a remake of Conquest of the Apes) with it's second reboot in ten years, has found a director in the form of Brit Rupert Wyatt. He co-wrote/directed the 2008 Sundance thriller The Escapist which I haven't seen but heard good things. In January, Scott Frank, who penned Out of Sight and Minority Report had turned in a draft that was deemed too costly by Fox. He was soon booted off and Jamie Moss (Street Kings, X-Men: First Class) hired to improve earlier writers Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (The Relic) structure. Frank's take on the material focused on a genetically modified chimpanzee doing a Bub from Day of the Dead, and would have required the creation of a photo-real CG monkey actor (Andy Serkis for mo-cap duties?!) in order to convincingly tell a pure science-fiction story with a strong grounding in social issues. How the script resembles Frank's now three more writers, and myriad studio heads, have had their damn, dirty hands all over it will be seen when - and if - this film ramps up into production proper. Meanwhile, in 'Conquest...', which Frank was adamant his script wasn't a remake of; Caesar, the son of Corenlius and Zira, led the ape revolution against humankind after apes became household pets following the extinction of dogs and cats. When the bullish new Fox producer Peter Chernin boarded the project in January he immediately sought out some big names to helm the project... Those included the now Oscar winning Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) who both turned him down upon reading the unusual, gloomy script for a tentpole. As did The Hughes Brothers (Book of Eli), Thomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In), Pierre Morel (Taken), James McTeigue (V for Vendetta), Dennis Illiadis (The Last House on the Left), and Scott Stewart (Legion). And that's just the names we know, and you know the script can't be much fun if so many sci-fi/action genre directors turned down a big franchise movie like this. In truth, Wyatt was likely to have been so far down the original list of people they wanted for this, they probably had to re-fill their printer because they ran out of paper before hitting his name. Expect a total cast overhaul (as although it's disguised as a prequel, it's really a reboot) from Tim Burton's peculiar line-up of Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Paul Giamatti and Helena Bonham Carter. Whether Rick Baker will return to oversee his original Oscar winning make-up remains to be confirmed. But despite middling reviews Burton's 'Apes' had a pretty healthy worldwide box-office of $362million, so it's surprising it's taken Fox this long to keep this franchise swinging. I guess they must be bananas... (I'll stop now).