1. Fox Tried To Remake It With The Writer Of Batman
Fox had Batman (1989) writer Sam Hamm take another shot at the POTA screenplay. He took Hayes' idea of prematurely aged babies and made it the subject of an exploratory space mission manned by a crew resembling the 1968 film's Taylor, Landon, Dodge and Stewart. Ape society is better drawn, with elements of both Boulle's more technological world and the classic film. There's even an ending which combines both of those seminal works: "Our old friend the Statue of Liberty, standing watch on her island pedestal she's undergone radical plastic surgery her once-proud porcelain features have been crudely chiselled into the grotesque likeness of a great grinning ape." But many of the other elements were hit-and-miss: an action sequence resembling the flying monkeys scene in The Wizard of Oz (1939); 'Lord' Zaius controlling his society via access to ape TV, with very dated references to 80s/90s movies. Once again, it didn't fly - although the intriguing disasters that might have resulted from Hamm's or Hayes' scripts would have been more interesting than the classically allusive but dry piece William Broyles, Jr. fashioned for Burton.
Writer/editor/ghost-writer transfixed by crime, cinema and the serrated edges of popular culture. Those similarly afflicted are invited to make contact.
