Over the last couple months, director Wes Ball (the Maze Runner trilogy) has been assembling the cast for his addition to the Planet of the Apes franchise, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. First we heard that Owen Teague (The Stand) had been cast as the film’s lead primate. Since then, Freya Allan (The Witcher), Peter Macon (The Orville), Eka Darville (Jessica Jones) and Kevin Durand (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) have joined the cast in unspecified roles. Two weeks ago, it was announced that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes had begun filming at Disney Studios in Sydney, Australia.
Now Deadline has revealed the names of five more cast members. They are Travis Jeffery (Unbroken), Sara Wiseman (One Of Us Is Lying), Neil Sandilands (Sweet Tooth), Ras-Samuel Welda’abzgi (The Clearing), and Lydia Peckham (Cowboy Bebop). Details on the characters Jeffery, Wiseman, Sandilands, Welda’abzgi, and Peckham will be playing have not been revealed.
Ball’s involvement with Planet of the Apes was first announced at the end of 2019. In 2020, he confirmed that development of the project was continuing through Zoom conversations during the pandemic shutdown. He was working on the script with Josh Friedman – whose credits include War of the Worlds 2005, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Terminator: Dark Fate, Snowpiercer, and Avatar: The Way of Water – and said an art team had been creating some “incredible concept art”. Ball also said that his movie is going to feel like the recent Apes movies (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, War for the Planet of the Apes) but will also be doing its own thing. He told Discussing Film,
Those last three movies are one of the great trilogies we have in modern movie history. They are just so well done. They honored the original movies they sprang from, the Charlton Heston movies, but they grounded it in a modern sensibility and it just worked. Caesar is one of the great movie characters that we’ll have throughout time. So what do you do to follow that up, right? At the same time, I wasn’t interested in doing a part four either. We want to also do our own thing.
We have a take. We have a way of staying in the universe that was created before us, but we’re also opening ourselves up in being able to do some really cool new stuff. Again, I’m trying to be careful here. I’ll say this, for fans of the original three don’t worry – you’re in good hands. The original writers and producers that came up with Rise and Dawn, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, they’re also on board with this. Josh Friedman is writing this thing, a lot of the same crew is kind of involved. We will feel like we’re part of that original trilogy, but at the same time we’re able to do some really cool new stuff. It will be really exciting to see on the biggest screen possible.”
Deadline has said that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will pick up “many years after the conclusion of War for the Planet of the Apes.” The film is set to be released sometime in 2024.
Are you looking forward to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes? What do you think of the cast Ball has put together? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.