Fantastic Four Director Matt Shakman to Helm New Planet of the Apes Movie

Matt Shakman is trading Marvel’s first family for a planet full of talking primates. The Fantastic Four: First Steps director has been tapped to helm a brand-new Planet of the Apes movie at 20th Century Studios, with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes writer Josh Friedman returning to pen the script.

The two worked together on last summer’s Fantastic Four: First Steps, which brought in $521 million globally, so there’s already a creative shorthand between them. Shakman will also produce alongside franchise veterans Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who have been shepherding the Apes series since the 2011 reboot. Scott Aversano, executive VP of production at 20th Century Studios, will oversee the project for the studio.

Plot details are being kept tightly under wraps, but here’s what we do know: the film will return to the world where apes are the dominant species. What it won’t do, at least according to sources, is pick up where 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes left off. The new movie is being described as a fresh original story that Shakman and Friedman are developing together — not a continuation of the most recent chapter in the franchise.

The Cliffhanger That’s Being Left Behind

For fans of Kingdom, that’s a lot to sit with. Wes Ball’s film — which earned $397.3 million worldwide and was generally well received — ended on a genuinely tantalizing note. Freya Allan’s Mae returns to a hidden underground colony of humans, having retrieved a device capable of restoring global satellite communication. The final reveal: pockets of humanity are still alive and organized around the world, ready to coordinate a push to reclaim the planet from the apes. It’s a setup that practically screamed sequel.

Leaving that thread dangling is a bold call, and a somewhat puzzling one given that Friedman wrote Kingdom himself and is now coming back for this new chapter. The franchise does have a precedent for this kind of storytelling whiplash — 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes literally ended with the Earth exploding, and a sequel arrived the very next year anyway — but it still stings for audiences invested in where Mae’s story was going.

Whether the new film exists within the same timeline as Kingdom or carves out something entirely separate hasn’t been confirmed. The only thing sources have made clear is that it’s a new original story, set on a planet still ruled by apes.

Why Shakman Makes Sense for This

If you’re going to hand someone a franchise built on groundbreaking visual effects and emotionally complex characters, Shakman is a reasonable choice. His Emmy-nominated work on Marvel’s WandaVision — which required him to juggle genre experimentation, massive VFX, and genuine character depth — is what first put him on the map as a blockbuster director. That show led directly to Fantastic Four: First Steps, which included motion-capture work for The Thing, echoing the kind of performance-driven digital craft that made Andy Serkis’ Caesar in the earlier Apes trilogy so celebrated.

His television résumé is equally stacked. He’s directed episodes of Game of Thrones and The Boys, helmed the pilot for Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and also directed pilots for The Great (starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult), The Consultant, and Welcome to Chippendales. Up next, before Apes takes over his schedule, he’ll direct the pilot and finale of Wild Things, starring Jude Law and Andrew Garfield.

Friedman, meanwhile, has become one of 20th Century Studios’ most trusted writers. Beyond Kingdom and Fantastic Four, he co-wrote both Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash for the studio — meaning he has a track record of working within sprawling, effects-heavy worlds that demand as much storytelling discipline as spectacle.

A Franchise With Staying Power

It’s worth remembering just how improbable the modern Apes renaissance actually was. After Tim Burton’s 2001 remake landed with a thud, the franchise looked finished. Then Rise of the Planet of the Apes arrived in 2011 with Andy Serkis delivering a motion-capture performance as Caesar that critics and audiences genuinely loved, and suddenly the series was one of Hollywood’s most reliable properties again. The Caesar trilogy collectively grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide. Kingdom proved the series could survive beyond that era.

Now, with Shakman and Friedman at the helm, this would become the 11th Planet of the Apes film in a franchise that dates back to 1968, when Charlton Heston first stumbled onto that beach and into cinema history. The total franchise box office now stands at over $1.7 billion — a number that makes the decision to keep expanding it, sequel or not, an easy one for 20th Century Studios.

And in what might be the most delightfully absurd footnote to all of this: Marvel Comics is currently publishing a crossover miniseries called Planet of the Apes vs. Fantastic Four — colliding the exact two franchises Shakman now has his fingerprints on. Sometimes the universe just has a sense of humor.