SPOILER WARNING: This story contains spoilers for the ending of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” now playing in theaters.
A new decade means a new “Planet of the Apes” trilogy.
The “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” ending teases much more story to come, and director Wes Ball has already confirmed there are plans for two more sequels. At that rate, the reboot series, comprised of two trilogies, will surpass the five-movie original series, which ran from 1968 to 1973.
The chimpanzee Noa (Owen Teague) and young human Mae (Freya Allan) seem ready for some more monkey business at the end of “Kingdom” — but maybe not on the same side. By the end of “Kingdom,” Noa and Mae have opposing views on whether apes or humans should be the dominant species on Earth. There’s also a secret clan of civilized humans who make contact with another group somewhere else in the world, thanks to the satellite key that Mae takes from the derelict bunker.
“Kingdom” goes back to the roots of the original “Apes” movies and flips the ape-against-human power dynamic seen in the reboot trilogy. Primates finally rule the world, and it’s now the humans who are powerless and must fight back. Mae seems to be a key member of these intelligent humans who have banded together to re-power the satellites and reenable communication with other survivors. Unlike the previous trilogy, which recast its human characters and jumped ahead by years in each movie, “Kingdom” sets up important roles for its homo-sapiens that may carry on in future installments. In addition to Allan, Dichen Lachman (“Severance,” “Jurassic World Dominion”) also plays a human operating the satellites at the end, paving the way for her to reappear in a possible sequel.
Producer Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa teased the new trilogy plans to Variety.
“[There’s] always this question from the very original: Can ape and human live side by side? Is there room on the planet for more than one intelligent species?” Silver said.
Jaffa added, “And that carries through all of the movies right up to “Kingdom.” [And] we did see, in terms of this carrying forward, that if we played it right, there’d be at least three movies.”
Ball previously told Gamesradar that he’d want future movies to build up and lead into the 1968 original “Planet of the Apes” movie.
“I do think there are still many, many years in-between when that Charlton Heston reality steps in, where a spaceship drops out of the sky onto a planet full of apes,” he said. “The connectedness of all these movies has always been a little loose, they aren’t like other franchises out there which are so absolutely carved in stone you can’t violate things – it’s always been a little loosely connected. In my mind if we had our choice, we wouldn’t go back and remake the 1968 version, we would build all the way up to it then start over, just go back and watch [the] ’68 version and the franchise through.”
And who might be the villain in the next “Apes” movie? It appears that the tyrannical ruler Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) falls to his watery death at the end of “Kingdom,” but can anyone really be sure? Without seeing a body, anything could happen — and Proximus would surely want to wreak vengeance on Noa and Mae for destroying his clan.
