Prequel Going Ape

James Franco has landed the lead role in Rise of the Apes, Fox's upcoming reboot of/prequel to the Planet of the Apes franchise, according to Deadline. The actor will play a scientist whose search for a cure to Alzheimer's disease inadvertently produces advanced intelligence in an ape test subject. Franco's character thus sets in motion the chain of events that will eventually lead to an ape revolution, although how much of that we'll see onscreen is unclear at this point. Rise of the Apes has been in development for several years and started life as a script called Caesar, loosely based around the ape messiah played by Roddy McDowall in 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. In that one, Caesar was the son of chimps Cornelius (McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter), who traveled back in time from our ape-dominated future. In the current version, the time-travel angle has been dropped and Caesar (if he's still called that) gets his smarts via human experimentation.