- #Charlton heston planet of the apes full movie movie
- #Charlton heston planet of the apes full movie series
Thompson eventually left the project since it was taking so long to set up and was replaced for a while by Blake Edwards ( The Pink Panther). Among the actors suggested for the role of Merou were Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, Burt Lancaster and Paul Newman, while Jacobs wanted Ursula Andress as the human savage Nova whom the lead character strikes up a relationship with. Lee Thompson, who later went on to direct the last two entries in the series, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Along the way he hired Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, to pen a screenplay, with the famed writer delivering draft after draft as Jacobs shopped the film around. Jacobs was allowed to offer the project to other studios, all of whom passed.
#Charlton heston planet of the apes full movie movie
He persuaded Fox president Richard Zanuck to purchase the rights for him - although neither man thought about how they would actually bring the book to life on the screen and in fact Zanuck kept passing on actually making the movie for several years because of Fox’s financial troubles at the time (the studio was nearly sank by the failure of the $40 million Cleopatra). Jacobs was looking for a sci-fi or fantasy property to film, and had even thought briefly of remaking King Kong, but was presented with Les Planete des Singes by a French literary agent. Interest in adapting Boulle’s novel to the screen started not long after the book was published, but the man who ultimately secured the rights and played the critical role in creating the franchise was publicist turned producer Arthur P. It not only played a role in saving it studio, 20 th Century Fox, but it broke new ground in film makeup, was one of two releases that year that elevated sci-fi to a new level as a legitimate film genre (the other being 2001: A Space Odyssey) and provided the template for the idea of a movie and its sequels telling a single, large-scale, continuing story instead of a new, unrelated tale with each entry.
Starring Charlton Heston, Planet of the Apes is regarded to this day as a science fiction classic.
And it all started with his book and the original film, produced and released in 1968.
#Charlton heston planet of the apes full movie series
Nevertheless, he used the template of sci-fi to tell the story of astronaut Ulysse Merou, who travels near the speed of light to the star Betelgeuse in the year 2500, where he becomes trapped on a planet that is ruled by intelligent, civilized apes while humans are mute savages - and where he must prove he is different.īoulle could not have known that his short yet pointed twist on the human condition would lead to one of the most successful science fiction franchises of all time, consisting of nine films (to date), two TV series (one live-action, one animated), comic books (including a magazine series from Marvel), toys, games, merchandise and more. Boulle wanted to write less of a science fiction novel and more of a social satire in the style of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. It was in January 1963 when French author Pierre Boulle ( The Bridge On the River Kwai) published a slim novel titled Le Planete des Singes, known internationally as Monkey Planet or Planet of the Apes when it was published later that year in the U.S.