Planet of the Apes director sets the stage for Kingdom and 'a lot more story to be told'

Although he didn’t know it, director Wes Ball spent his childhood training to direct Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the 10th movie in the science-fiction franchise which began with the 1968 Charlton Heston-starring installment. "I was born in 1980, but for whatever reason I grew up watching that original ’68 version a lot," the filmmaker explains. "It’s odd that a kid would watch some older movie like that, but I fixated on that and here I am playing a role in that long legacy."

The world in which this latest tale takes place much more closely resembles the one encountered by Heston's time-traveling astronaut than anything seen in the most recent rebooted franchise. Simians are now in charge of a society which has slipped back to an earlier time, technologically speaking. Disease has wiped out much of humanity and transformed the remainder into mute, unintelligent beings.

Ball reveals that his movie is set long after the last series entry, Matt Reeves' 2017 film War for the Planet of the Apes, the third big-screen tale to hinge around the chimpanzee Caesar who was played, with CG assistance, by Andy Serkis.

"It’s many, many generations later," Ball says. "In the time between the previous movie and this movie, this Dark Ages has happened where things have been lost, and in our movie we’re going to rediscover them on this grand adventure."

The ape we follow on that quest is another chimpanzee called Noa, played by Owen Teague, whose credits include the It movies and 2020's The Stand TV series. Ball describes the character as neither an adult nor a kid. "He’s on that threshold of becoming who he is going to be as an ape," he says. "It’s about him falling into these extraordinary circumstances that lead him into a world that he doesn’t know."

Teague's Noa is featured in EW's exclusive new look at Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, along with his two chimp chums, Lydia Peckham's Soona and Travis Jeffery's Anaya.

"They were raised together and they live in this small, isolated tribe," says Ball, who directed the three Maze Runner movies. The filmmaker teases that the shot of them reading from a book is from a chapter of Noa's journey and shows the trio "looking at something that they don’t understand."

The film's antagonist is another chimpanzee named Proximus, who is played by Kevin Durand and sounds like the future world's Thomas Edison — or maybe its Elon Musk. According to Ball, "The interesting thing about Proximus is that, with some help, he’s rediscovered electricity. To apes that forgot about all these things, that’s like a magic power. So they’re experimenting with it. I don’t even think you can call him a villain. I would call him an adversary. You understand him, you can relate to him in a way. It's an interesting character who isn’t just a mustache-twirling cutout."

The film's teaser trailer features Noa riding a horse towards vegetation-covered skyscrapers, and you can see exclusive early concept art of that sequence.

"I've got a lot of great concept artists. We just sit there and daydream," the director says. "That was one of those images that [was] like, oh that feels like this movie: a character on the border into a world he doesn’t understand. For him, these ruins are mountains, they’ve always been there. He has no idea where they came from or who built them or if they were built at all."

Ball has confirmed that his next film will likely be a live-action adaptation of beloved video game The Legend of Zelda, but the director is keen to make more monkey business and believes Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes could be the start of a new multi-movie saga.

"We don’t want to be presumptuous. Whether this movie is successful is up to the movie gods," he says. "But we certainly think there is a lot more story to be told, not just in the Planet of the Apes legacy of it all, but in terms of these characters we’ve created and the arcs that we're thinking about. So, yeah, we’ve got good ideas for what would come next."

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will be released in theaters next year on May 24.

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