Planet of the Apes 4 will start filming this year and the script is nearly finished, 20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell has revealed.
"We are expecting a draft very shortly, and it’s Wes Ball attached to direct. We hope to go by the late summer, early fall," Asbell said during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. War of the Worlds screenwriter Josh Friedman is co-writing the script with Ball.
The rebooted Planet of the Apes series takes place before the events of the original 1968 movie, which sees an American astronaut in the distant future land on a planet dominated by talking apes. The twist is, of course, that the planet was Earth all along. Four sequels followed in the '60s and '70s, and the movie was remade in 2001 by Tim Burton.
The latest Planet of the Apes movie, War for the Planet of the Apes, directed by The Batman helmer Matt Reeves, was released in 2017. With previous installments released in 2011 and 2014, this is the biggest gap yet between movies. As for what the new movie will have in store, it's hard to say – Caesar, the leader of the apes (voiced by Andy Serkis) died at the end of the last movie, so we may see a struggle for power.
Elsewhere at 20th Century Studios, it's been confirmed that Free Guy 2's script is also nearly finished and more sequels are on the way there, too. A third movie in Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot movie series has also been confirmed.
