APES no longer evolving! CAESAR locked away in chains once more

I'm of the opinion that 20th Century Fox weren't ever that keen on Scott Frank's re-imagining of the bleak and brutal Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and I'm not surprised to hear from CHUD that his project has been put on hold and the writer/director has bailed. Looks like the Planet of the Apes series will take it's place back on that dusty Fox franchise shelf once again, labeled "when we desperately need cash, use this!" but something tells me this particular pitch will never see the light of day ever again and it's dead for good. When push came to shove, Fox were always going to want a more mainstream friendly reboot. Something epic in scope but also heavy on action and romance, ironically more along the lines of Tim Burton's 2001 movie. A movie that doesn't need to make sense, (it's a bonus if it does), it just needs to make cash. We've seen Fox utilise this strategy time and time again with the Alien series but most recently also with it's creative mindset for the X-Men franchise, the X-Files series, Predator and Street Fighter. Money first, sense later but of course this strategy will kill them in the long run and like the boy who cried wolf too many times, no-one will come and save Fox's tentpoles when they try and sell us the same bullshit story for the 1,000 time. For those that have seen Conquest, it's by far the bleakest of the series dealing with themes of racial discrimination at it's forefront. A movie that wants to lecture you rather than entertain you.

I won't shed a tear for this project and as much as I admire Frank (his screenplay credits include Minority Report and The Interpreter) and his desire to do something a little different with a franchise reboot, and I'm sure the movie would have been of good quality but I kinda feel like I've seen every possible interpretation of what an Ape vs. Man movie could be, and in some cases several times, so he was always fighting a losing battle here. Out of all the big movies franchises from cinema's past, surely it is the POTA franchise that has been bled dry the most with six movies, one a failed remake/reboot and both a live-action and animated t.v. show. Surely it's now time to move on. Planet of the Apes franchise is done and over. Has been for years.