After finding success with The Fantastic Four: First Steps, director Matt Shakman and writer Josh Friedman will be heading up the next Planet of the Apes movie, according to a report from Deadline. While Shakman will be a newcomer to the franchise, Friedman previously wrote 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which built upon Matt Reeves’ reboot trilogy from the 2010s. While the details about this new movie are unclear, my hope is that it at least takes place in the same universe established by Reeves.

According to Deadline’s report, the next Planet of the Apes film “will mark a return to the planet where apes are the superior species ruling all.” Deadline’s sources say Shakman’s Apes sequel won’t be a continuation of 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, but a new, original story.

Photo: 20th Century Fox

There are a couple of different ways to take that. One is that this will be a totally fresh reboot. The other is that it will be a stand-alone sequel like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which, technically, was not a direct continuation of Reeves’ Planet of the Apes trilogy as it took place hundreds of years later with all new characters. My hope is that the latter scenario is the case, and we get another new, original story set in Reeves’ universe. That trilogy is still very fresh in the public consciousness and the technological breakthroughs made for the creation of the CGI apes still hold up very well.

With the freedom to develop new characters and explore new locations, there is still so much potential to explore that rich universe, much like Kingdom did. After Reeves’ trilogy, Kingdom told a smaller story that was still very interesting, and the preceding films just gave that movie more layers. There’s an opportunity to do that again here, so my hope is that they take it, as having this franchise consist of many stand-alone, different-feeling films would be a viable way forward. Plus, I’m just not ready yet to say goodbye to the ape planet founded by Caesar.

As a side note, I find it especially ironic that the director of The Fantastic Four: First Steps is helming the next Planet of the Apes, as a very ape-centric scene was cut from his Marvel movie. Set early in the film, the deleted scene featured the Fantastic Four fighting the Red Ghost (John Malkovich) and his Super Apes. Of the sequence, all that made it into the final movie was nine seconds of Mr. Fantastic kicking an orangutan into the water, but we were meant to get a good deal more. This makes me wonder if Shakman’s next venture is a bit of retribution for that deleted scene.