Matt Reeves would like the ‘Planet of the Apes’ franchise to carry on.
The director helmed the two latest movies in the franchise – 2014’s ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ and this year’s ‘War of the Planet of the Apes’ – and the most recent release is intended to be the end of a trilogy.
However, Reeves would love the chance to continue the series and develop other characters such as Steve Zahn’s Bad Ape instead of the focus being on Andy Serkis’ chimpanzee alter ego Caesar.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Reeves said: "The whole idea of Bad Ape is that there are other apes out there, and those apes don’t have the benefits of Caesar’s leadership. The conflicts of the future are not going to be humans and apes, they will be apes and apes. I wanted to seed that idea because I thought there were a lot more stories and there are characters that I have grown to love."
Reeves and producer Dylan Clark previously had discussions about continuing the story beyond the trilogy.
Speaking to Slashfilm, they said: "We absolutely have ideas about where it goes. Because we know that that’s the ending, that it becomes ‘Planet of The Apes’, the cool thing about what was started in ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ is that it’s no longer about what happens.
"It’s about how it happens. And stories about how are always about character and psychology. Caesar’s apes are not like the apes in the ‘Planet of the Apes’, right? They’re very brutal to the humans.
"That’s not what’s going on, so how did that happen? And you know that Caesar had such integrity, and that he has this sort of sense of right and wrong, of his morality, yet you watch that be challenged.
"He ends up having to kill one of his own. All of those things give us a chance to explore human nature and do it in a way that is really fun.
"Because these are all, frankly, totally new stories. We’re not doing any stories that were done."
Matt Reeves wants Planet of the Apes franchise to carry on
