Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes director describes the movie as "Apocalypto with apes"

Director Wes Ball’s (now also attached to the live-action Legend of Zelda movie) one-line pitch for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was a surprising but enticing one.

Marketing for the next Planet of the Apes movie, which is set to kick off a new story arc for the enduring sci-fi series, is about to ramp up as we enter 2024, and Empire’s latest issue includes new details about where the movie is going and how it was developed.

Their conversation with Ball and his team got off to a good start when the filmmaker revealed he “had this flood of ideas” once he figured out the basic pitch: “Apocalypto with apes.” Any comparison to a historical epic would’ve been wild, but bringing up Mel Gibson’s 2006 mercilessly bloody, one-of-a-kind movie should make everyone’s ears perk up. That movie depicted “a ferocious trip through a dangerous jungle in early 1500s Yucatán.” In it, a young man named Jaguar Paw, a late Mesoamerican hunter, and his fellow tribesmen are captured by an invading force and brought to a Mayan city for human sacrifice.