‘Planet of the Apes 3’ to Continue the Trajectory Set in the First Two Films, Says Director Matt Reeves, of Caesar's Evolution in Ape History

20th Century Fox's Planet of the Apes 3 will be released on July 14, 2017, instead of the previously announced date of July 29, 2016. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Planet of the Apes 2) director Matt Reeves has been re-hired to helm the still untitled sequel to his critically acclaimed and commercially successful film. He will direct based on a script he will also be co-writing with Mark Bombeck.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which was released July 11 last year, has so far grossed close to $555 million worldwide at the box office. Rotten Tomatoes' critic consensus about the movie says, "With intelligence and emotional resonance to match its stunning special effects, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes expands on its predecessor with an exciting and ambitious burst of sci-fi achievement." To date, none of the film's cast has been confirmed to return for the sequel. However, there is widespread fan clamor that Andy Serkis, who voiced and did the motion capture performance for the Caesar character, be brought back for Planet of the Apes 3.

Though Planet of the Apes 3 is still at the development stage, Reeves in an interview with io9 shared some of his thoughts on the possible direction that the next film in the series will be heading to. In the next film, it may explore how Caesar will rise to assume his god-like stature among the apes. Said Reeves: "He becomes a very mythic character. And he's the Caesar that shall begin other Caesars....The question is how do we get there? And this then becomes a generational story. A story of not only of Caesar and his family, but his children and how this story continues down that path. How Caesar becomes the first, truly mythic god-like character for the apes. He's very seminal figure for the apes. The idea, the objective for the story was to being the beginning of that mythic status for him. He goes from being a kind of revolutionary to a kind of leader to a mythic god."

In another interview with Coming Soon, Reeves elaborates: "The first one [Rise of the Planet of the Apes] is sort of how [Caesar] goes from humble beginnings to becoming a revolutionary. In Dawn, he really rose to occasion of becoming a leader in really challenging and difficult times. The notion of what we're after with the third [Planet of the Apes 3] is to sort of continue that trajectory and see how he becomes a seminal figure in ape history. He almost becomes sort of like an ape Moses. A mythic status... We're trying to play out those themes and continue to sort of explore it in this universe. Exploring human nature under the guise of apes