Beasts of burden

The movies that failed to get off the ground…

When Tim Burton’s beastly Planet Of The Apes remake emerged to drag its knuckles across multiplex screens in 2001, it was all the more disappointing for being the end result of 13 years’ worth of wrangling to relaunch Fox’s prize franchise.

In 1988, the mooted Return To The Planet Of The Apes positioned itself as the true sequel to 1968’s Planet Of The Apes. It would see the descendent of Taylor, played by Charlton Heston in the original, lead an uprising against his hairy rulers, and was days from entering pre-production when Fox brought in some new execs who requested script rewrites before scrapping it altogether.

The next rendition to gain momentum was Return Of The Apes, in which a pair of scientists – one of them played by Arnold Schwarzenegger – would travel back in time to cure humanity of a genetic sickness. Phillip Noyce was lined up to direct, only for the whole project to fall apart when an executive insisted on the addition of a comedy scene featuring apes playing baseball.

Arnie, however, remained in place as Chris Columbus became attached to a new version, in which an ape astronaut unleashes a virus on Earth and scientists must visit the apes’ home planet to quest for a cure. James Cameron came in to produce, promised to take the script in a different direction, and then dropped out after Titanic caused such a splash he no longer fancied monkeying around. Shame – any of the above would surely have been more fun than Burton’s listless reboot. JG