War for the Planet of the Apes hits cinemas on 11 July, and it's already gaining critical claim – making the rebooted Apes franchise one of the most consistently interesting and well-loved this century.
It's no mean feat, given how revered the originals are (and how not-revered Tim Burton's attempt is). These three Apes movies, though, have somehow come at just the right time, when the technology can produce photo-real apes mapped onto motion-capture performances, and audiences are open to a series of summer blockbusters which are adult, intelligent and political.
While War is being billed as the third part of a trilogy, talks have already begun for what might be next for the series.
Digital Spy spoke exclusively with director Matt Reeves about the direction the movies are likely to take.
*The below contain some minor SPOILERS for War For The Planet Of The Apes*
Reeves told us that he was hoping to do a fourth (though of course it'll depend on the success of the third film). He reckons the key to the way the series might expand is a new character - the sweet, weird, surprising and self-titled 'Bad Ape' – played by Steve Zahn.
"Its been my thought from the beginning of this – when we came up with Bad Ape, the reason we came up with Bad Ape was because of what he implies. The fun of moving the story out into the realm of the mythic [in] is that as Caesar leaves the confines of the Muir Woods and moves across the terrain, like in a David Lean epic, there's a world of discovery and the world ends up being larger than the apes ever knew, which is that, 'wait a minute, we're not the only ones'."
*SPOILER ALERT*
What he's talking about is the moment Caesar and his gang realise that ape intelligence has spread, that there could be other pockets of smart apes who are evolved and able to talk outside of the community which he leads.
"That idea is to me the future of the franchise, the idea of being connected to these characters that have been introduced, that we love and that we know from the beginning – like Maurice and Rocket and Bad Ape now and Nova – but that the future conflicts might not only be humans against apes but actually apes in conflict with each other.
"Apes who didn't have the benefit of Caesar's leadership and weren't instilled with the kind of world view and integrity which Caesar tried to instil in his apes. How they will survive that; and how that will take us still closer to the world of the '68 film in which the apes are quite different from Caesar's apes."
Looks like the world of apes could open out wide in the future then, with some familiar characters but perhaps a whole new faction of apes. And we're totally down with that.
War for the Planet of the Apes opens in cinemas on 11 July.
