After Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, everyone cannot stop talking about those titular apes. (We’re all having some feelings about them as well.) I just want more of Noa and Mae in my life. So is there hope we can see this franchise continue?
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, creators Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa talked about the future of these movies and even pointed out that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes set them up for future stories. “With Kingdom, we really feel like we’ve set the foundation for at least two more movies with these characters,” Jaffa said. “But we’ll see. A lot of it depends on the audience’s reaction, too.”
Silver went on to say the franchise was originally seen as being a lot longer. “When you first came up with this idea, the Apes franchise way back, you saw nine movies. We thought, ‘This is crazy ambitious.’ But here we are. We’re at four.” That would give us five more movies of this iteration of the story.
Jaffa confirmed that he did see the franchise as a nine-movie saga but isn’t sure they’ll make it there. “I saw nine. I don’t know if we’ll make it to nine. I would love it. We’ve spoken to not just Wes and Josh and [producer] Joe Hartwick Jr., but to Steve Asbell and Scott Aversano at 20th about what these next movies can be.”
The two then went on to discuss the excitement of this series. “It’s really interesting to be working on a franchise which is so quietly subversive in its way and has something to say and asks questions,” Silver said. Jaffa followed it up by asking “Is there room for two intelligent species?”
So you’re saying we can have five more movies?
Both Jaffa and Silver put the future of the franchise on the reaction of audiences and we have, for the most part, not stopped talking about this film. This movie is what the franchise was always leading towards: giving us two beings—Noa (Owen Teague) and Mae (Freya Allan)—who can co-exist with each other. There is a future in these movies and their plan for a nine-story arc has me interested.
We don’t know yet how many movies there will actually be but Jaffa and Silver are not planning on stopping and that’s all I need to know.
