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‘Planet of the Apes’ again? Yes, Hollywood still has a monkey on its back

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Wall Street went bananas today and here’s the picture to prove it. Well, actually this is a 2008 photo by Mary Altaffer of the Associated Press who snapped a shot of an actor visiting the New York Stock Exchange to promote the 40th anniversary of Planet of the Apes.”

I had monkey on the mind when I saw Pamela McClintock’s short Variety item on a project tentatively titled “Rise of the Apes,” which will return yet again to the world of Dr. Zaius and Cornelius. Here’s an excerpt, links added by me.

“Rise of the Apes” is an origins story set in present-day San Francisco. The film is a reality-based cautionary tale, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy. Weta will render, for the first time ever in the film series, photo-realistic apes rather than costumed actors.

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The Weta presence is intriguing but, wow, do we need another “Apes” movie? That original 1968 film was followed by four sequels “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” in 1970, “Escape from the Planet of the Apes” (1971), “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” (1972) and “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” (1973) and then there was “Planet of the Apes” (2001) which was a “re-imagining” of the original by director Tim Burton. Then there were the television shows, too, both live-action and animated. I would have thought the Burton dud (which I had very high hopes for, by the way) would have gotten this monkey off of Hollywood’s back.

-- Geoff Boucher

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PHOTOS: Top, 2008 photo by Associated Press. Second, poster for “Apes.” Third, vintage images from “Planet of the Apes” (20th Century Fox).


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