Friday, March 28, 2014

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Impress @ CinemaCon

Fresh footage from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes wowed audiences at this year's CinemaCon.

The film will continue the action from Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The film is set a decade after Rise's post-credits sequence where the global human population has been substantially reduced due to the Simian Flu. Meanwhile, Caesar and his fellow ape sanctuary escapees have spent the past decade expanding to a community of about 2,000 apes on the outskirts of San Francisco. The enhanced find themselves threatened by a band of human survivors. A fragile peace proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war.

The sequel is said to be "more of a human story" with the conflict shown primarily from the humans' POV.

"Rise" helmer Rupert Wyatt chose not to return reportedly due to the fact that the director wasn't comfortable with making the May 23rd 2014 release date the studio had originally announced. "Cloverfield" director Matt Reeves takes over.

Rise star James Franco does not return instead--Zero Dark Thirty actor Jason Clarke Keri Russell Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman Judy Greer and Kodi Smit-McPhee star


 Ceasar himself Serkis tells Empire:

"For the first eight years [after the spread of the virus], the apes were looking down from Muir Woods to San Francisco and could see lights and fires, but now it's gone very quiet. Until this day in our film when this small band of humans comes up. That's suddenly a huge, dividing moment in the lives of these apes. There are some particularly strong reactions to the humans and that’s the course of the story."

The CinemaCon footage included Caesar speaking to his fellow apes with words such as 'family,' 'future' and 'apes together strong'. Oldman's character is a human leader and anti-ape hardliner.  Clarke and Russell's characters are sympathetic to the apes and the idea of peaceful co-existence.

There's a key scene that seems comical between an ape, two men and a bottle of booze--it turns deadly when the ape grabs a gun and shoots one of them.

Mark Bomback ("Live Free or Die Hard," "Unstoppable") is set to rework Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa's script. Bombeck is expected to turn in something more suited to the new director's style. This is Deja Vu On 'Rise' Silver & Jaffa wrote the initial script and then Bomback did an uncredited script rewrite.

"Contagion" scribe Scott Z. Burns took a crack at the "Dawn" script as well

Peter Chernin Dylan Clark Silver and Jaffa will produce.

The film is now targeting a July 11th 2014 release.

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