• Matt Shakman, director of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is set to helm a new Planet of the Apes movie at 20th Century Studios.
• The film will not be a sequel to 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes — it’s a brand-new original story.
• Josh Friedman, who co-wrote both Kingdom and First Steps, returns to write the script.
• Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, producers on the previous Apes films, are back on board alongside Shakman as producer.
• The franchise has earned over $1.7 billion worldwide, making this one of 20th Century Studios’ most valuable IPs.

Matt Shakman is heading back to the jungle — or rather, the planet. Fresh off directing The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Shakman has been tapped to helm a brand-new Planet of the Apes movie at 20th Century Studios, with screenwriter Josh Friedman alongside him to develop the script.

Here’s the twist: the new film will not pick up where 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes left off. According to Deadline, which first broke the news, sources say this will be “a new original story that Shakman and Friedman are developing” — though plot details are otherwise being kept tightly under wraps. The one thing we do know is that the film will return to the planet where apes are the dominant species. So the core premise is intact. Everything else is a blank slate.

For fans who were invested in Kingdom’s cliffhanger ending, that’s going to sting a little. Wes Ball’s film earned $397.3 million worldwide on a $160 million budget and landed an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes — numbers that, on paper, look like a sequel greenlight waiting to happen. Ball had reportedly envisioned a full trilogy. But compared to the heights of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes, Kingdom was considered an underperformance in relative terms, and that context likely shaped the studio’s thinking here.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that “a sequel to Kingdom was talked about, but it is not clear where things stand with that.” Whether this new Shakman film exists in the same timeline as Kingdom, or carves out an entirely separate one, hasn’t been confirmed.

Why Shakman Makes Sense for This

Shakman earned his blockbuster credentials the hard way. He first broke through with Marvel Studios’ WandaVision on Disney+, earning an Emmy nomination for his directing work on the series. That visibility led to him being attached to a new Star Trek film — a project he ultimately stepped away from when Marvel came calling with Fantastic Four.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps opened last summer to solid reviews and pulled in $521.9 million globally. The film was effects-heavy throughout, which matters enormously for a Planet of the Apes movie — the modern franchise is built on entirely CGI ape characters rendered through motion capture, a technical challenge that demands a director who’s comfortable working in that space.

Beyond Marvel, Shakman has a quietly impressive TV résumé: he helmed pilots for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, The Consultant, Welcome to Chippendales, and The Great starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult. Up next, he’ll direct the pilot and finale of Wild Things, starring Jude Law and Andrew Garfield. The man stays busy.

Friedman, meanwhile, has become one of 20th Century Studios’ most trusted writers. In addition to Kingdom and First Steps, he co-wrote both Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash for the studio — which means he has experience working on some of the most technically complex, world-building-heavy franchises in Hollywood.

Where the Franchise Stands

Planet of the Apes is one of the longest-running sci-fi franchises in Hollywood history, stretching back to the 1968 original starring Charlton Heston — based on Pierre Boulle’s 1963 French novel La Planète des singes — which won a special Academy Award and became one of that year’s biggest hits. Four theatrical sequels followed in the early ’70s, then two TV series, then Tim Burton’s divisive 2001 remake with Mark Wahlberg, and then the acclaimed reboot trilogy that began with Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011.

That reboot trilogy — anchored by Andy Serkis’s landmark motion-capture performance as Caesar — is widely regarded as one of the better franchise reinventions of the modern era. Kingdom was meant to start a new chapter set generations after Caesar’s time, with an entirely new cast of characters. Whether that chapter continues in any form now seems genuinely uncertain.

In total, this new Shakman film will be the 11th Planet of the Apes movie, adding to a franchise that has collectively earned more than $1.7 billion at the worldwide box office. Producing alongside Shakman are Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, veterans of the modern Apes films, with 20th Century Studios exec VP of production Scott Aversano overseeing for the studio.

There’s no release date yet, no cast, and no official title. But with Shakman and Friedman — the same team behind one of Marvel’s biggest hits — now developing an original story in one of Hollywood’s most enduring sci-fi universes, this one is worth watching closely.

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• Matt Shakman, director of Fantastic Four: First Steps, is set to direct a new Planet of the Apes movie at 20th Century Studios.
• Josh Friedman, who wrote both Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Fantastic Four: First Steps, is returning to write the script.
• The new film will reportedly be a fresh original story — not a sequel to 2024’s Kingdom, leaving that film’s cliffhanger unresolved.
• Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, producers on the previous Apes films, are back on board alongside Shakman.
• This would be the 11th Planet of the Apes movie overall, in a franchise that has amassed over $1.7 billion at the worldwide box office.

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.

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