I love the Planet of the Apes franchise. Everything from the original 1968 movie to the short-lived TV series to the excellent Apes trilogy starring Andy Serkis; hell, I’ve even got a soft spot for Tim Burton’s reboot. The next installment of the franchise is just over the horizon, and the audience at CinemaCon got to witness an exclusive sneak peek of thirteen minutes of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. I am officially jealous.
The footage starts in an ape community in the jungle and follows young Noa (Owen Teague) as he and his friends steal some eggs from an eagle’s nest. There are three eggs, but they leave one behind, as that’s the law. They hope to raise the young eagles themselves, but unfortunately, they’re caught in the act by the momma eagle, and Noa is nearly knocked off a cliff. We then see a scene in which gorillas attack the village, killing some and enslaving others. Noa survives but finds that his father has been killed and his mother taken. He buries his father and promises to rescue his mother and the other villagers. During his journey, he finds a friend and mentor in Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan, and saves the life of a human (Freya Allen) from gorillas. All in all, it looks pretty jaw-dropping and a worthy continuation of the modern trilogy.
It was also mentioned at CinemaCon that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will also be the first film in the franchise to be released on IMAX screens, and it sounds like it will be well worth the experience.
Directed by Wes Ball, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes “breathes new life into the global, epic franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.“
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will hit theaters on May 10th.
