We’ve known for a while that the latest installment in the Planet of the Apes franchise took place a least a few decades after the last trilogy of films, which ended with 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes. Today we found out, however, that this movie isn’t decades in the future, but centuries.
According to Empire, the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Wes Ball, will take place 300 years in the future. That means that the protagonist of the three recent films—Caesar (Andy Serkis)—is long gone, and his legacy is largely forgotten.
“Noa has no idea who that is,” Owen Teague told Empire, referring to his starring character, the ape who has to rediscover Caesar’s teachings about apes working together. “Part of his journey is a discovery of that legacy and its various interpretations. Noa has to make sense of what it all means.”
There is a character named Caesar in the movie—an ape who apparently remembered the original’s teachings and takes the name Proximus Caesar, though Empire warns that the character doesn’t have the betterment of ape-kind at heart.
“Caesar is almost a religious figure, and Proximus has taken on the name Caesar because it was the highest position held in ape society,” said Kevin Durand, who plays Proximus. “It was a self-proclamation that was achieved by any means necessary, to ensure that apes continue to evolve. So you’re seeing the influence and the evolution of what Caesar left. And, like in every morsel of human history, there’s always some type of tyrant who comes along and scares everyone into believing them.”
This upcoming film, as Ball told Empire, is also just the first installment of a new story. “From the beginning, we thought about this as a trilogy,” he said.
He added: “Those last three movies were about the end of something. They were about the end of this Moses story. They were about the end of humanity,” he explained. “And we thought, ‘From the ashes of those previous movies, we’re gonna grow a new tree to climb.’ This movie is very much about the beginning of something.”
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes premieres in theaters on May 24, 2024.
