Credit: LucasfilmDisney has spent the better part of the last two decades building its theatrical identity around massive franchise filmmaking.
Star Wars and Avatar
From Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) reigniting the Star Wars saga, to James Cameron’s Avatar franchise continuing to dominate the global box office, the studio has increasingly relied on major cinematic brands to anchor its theatrical release schedule.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe
Marvel Studios alone transformed superhero storytelling into a billion-dollar machine through films like Avengers: Endgame (2019) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), while legacy properties from 20th Century Fox have also become central to Disney’s long-term strategy following the company’s acquisition of Fox assets in 2019.
Planet of the Apes
One of those franchises was Planet of the Apes — and now Disney appears to be taking the series in an entirely new direction.
The modern Apes saga began with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), directed by Rupert Wyatt and starring Andy Serkis as Caesar through groundbreaking performance-capture technology. Produced on a reported budget of roughly $93 million, the film became a major success, earning more than $480 million worldwide and earning praise for its emotional storytelling and visual effects.
That success led to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) from director Matt Reeves, which expanded Caesar’s story while introducing a darker, more war-driven conflict between humans and apes. The sequel grossed more than $710 million globally, becoming the highest-grossing entry in the rebooted series.
Reeves returned once again for War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), a bleak and emotional conclusion to Caesar’s trilogy. While the film earned slightly less commercially than its predecessor, it still brought in nearly $500 million worldwide and was widely praised for Serkis’ performance and the franchise’s visual effects work.
Related: ‘Planet of the Apes’ Will Cross Paths With ‘Jurassic World’ For Brand-New Sequel
Disney later continued the reboot continuity with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), directed by Wes Ball. Set generations after Caesar’s death, the film introduced a new cast led by Owen Teague and Freya Allan while positioning itself as the beginning of another trilogy. The movie earned nearly $400 million globally and received mostly positive reviews from critics.
However, despite Kingdom clearly setting up future installments, Disney now appears to be pivoting away from that continuity altogether.
New Planet of the Apes Reboot in the Works
According to Deadline, Matt Shakman has been tapped to direct a brand-new Planet of the Apes movie for 20th Century Studios. The report states that the project “will not be a sequel” to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, strongly suggesting that the franchise is being rebooted yet again rather than continuing the most recent series of films.
The outlet adds: “Plot details are being kept under wraps other than the film will mark a return to the planet where apes are the superior species ruling all. While not confirmed, sources tell Deadline that this will not be a continuation of the most recent pic, 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, but a new original story that Shakman and Friedman are developing. Friedman also penned that script along with Silver and Jaffa.”
Shakman is coming off The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) and will reunite with screenwriter Josh Friedman, who also wrote Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. According to reports, the film is being developed as an original story separate from the 2025 sequel.
This decision effectively sidelines the storyline introduced in Kingdom, despite previous comments from Ball and studio executives that suggested the film was intended to launch a new era of Apes films.
That makes Planet of the Apes one of Disney’s latest major franchises to undergo another creative reset — something increasingly common as studios attempt to keep long-running properties commercially viable across generations of audiences.
The Apes franchise has already survived multiple reinventions across nearly 60 years of filmmaking history. Following the original 1968 classic starring Charlton Heston, the series quickly expanded into multiple sequels including Beneath the Planet of the Apes (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).
The property later returned to theaters with Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes (2001) remake starring Mark Wahlberg and Helena Bonham Carter, which proved commercially successful but was heavily criticized by both fans and critics.
There’s no release date for the untitled Planet of the Apes movie.
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