Love it or hate it, the Planet of the Apes is returning to the silver screen, and sooner than one might have expected. Set to release a decade after Tim Burton’s 2001 debacle, Fox will voyage to the planet once more on June 24th, 2011. Now titled Rise of the Apes, the story will give the origin of those damn dirty apes, and will be set in present day under the direction of The Escapist‘s Rupert Wyatt. The special effects gurus at WETA will be the craftsman behind the furry creatures that will do the rising. Despite any bad taste left behind by Burton, or any dislike for the franchise in general, the work done by WETA should give everyone something to oogle over come next summer.
Read the official release from Deadline below:
LOS ANGELES (May 6, 2010) __ Twentieth Century Fox has set a June 24, 2011 release for RISE OF THE APES, a completely new take on one of the Studio’s most beloved and successful franchises. Oscar®-winning visual effects house WETA Digital – employing certain of the groundbreaking technologies developed for AVATAR – will render, for the first time ever in the film series, photo-realistic apes rather than costumed actors.
Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark will produce for Chernin Entertainment under its new pact with Fox. Acclaimed filmmaker Rupert Wyatt (“The Escapist”) is directing from a screenplay by Amanda Silver & Rick Jaffa, who also are producing.
RISE OF THE APES (tentative title) is an origin story in the truest sense of the term. Set in present day San Francisco, the film is a reality-based cautionary tale, a science fiction/science fact blend, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.