Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a 2024 American science fiction action film directed by Wes Ball and written by Josh Friedman.

The film stars Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, and William H. Macy.

Development on a new Planet of the Apes film began in April 2019, following Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, with Ball attached as writer and director that December.

[10][11] Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on May 2, 2024, and was released by 20th Century Studios in the United States on May 10.

Many generations after Caesar's death,[b] apes have become the dominant species on Earth, establishing numerous clans, while the surviving humans have become feral.

Noa, a young chimpanzee hunter from a falconry-practicing clan, prepares for a coming-of-age ceremony by collecting wild eagle eggs with his friends Anaya and Soona.

As Noa takes Soona to look through a telescope he found on his journey, Mae travels to an intelligent human settlement at a satellite base.

[28] Bomback felt that "there was probably only one more big chapter left to tell", explaining how Caesar "came to be this Moses figure in the Apes world".

[36] The next month, it was revealed that Josh Friedman would co-write the script with Ball, and that Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver would return to produce the film after doing so for the previous installments.

[37] In March 2022, 20th Century president Steve Asbell stated that he was expecting a screenplay draft shortly, aiming for production to begin by the end of the year.

[38] By June, Oddball Entertainment and Shinbone Productions were also set to produce the film,[39][40] while the search for the main star was underway following the script's completion the previous month.

He felt the protagonist Noa was neither a child nor adult, but a figure placed in "extraordinary" circumstances and living in a nomadic ape tribe.

[44] The next month, Freya Allan and Peter Macon joined the cast with the announcement of the film's title and release year,[16] as did Eka Darville and Kevin Durand in October.

[46] Principal photography began in October 2022 at Disney Studios Australia in Sydney, with funding partially provided by the Australian Government,[47] under the working title Forbidden Zone.

[49] Erik Winquist served as the visual effects supervisor, with vendors including Wētā FX, which had previously done work on the prior three Planet of the Apes reboot films.

[51] The team used techniques for their previous film Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) when working on an action sequence involving a human-hunt taking place on rivers.

This was due to requiring the CG models of apes based on motion-capture performances to appear realistic when interacting with water.

[53] Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes held its world premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on May 2, 2024,[54] followed by an early access screening on May 8.

[56] The film was previously set for release on May 24,[57] but was rescheduled two weeks earlier to avoid competition with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and The Garfield Movie during Memorial Day weekend.

[60][61] As part of a viral marketing campaign in California, actors wearing realistic ape costumes were dispatched on horseback to Venice Beach and Crissy Field in April 2024.

[5][4] In the United States and Canada, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was projected to gross $50–55 million from 4,075 theaters in its opening weekend.

[76] According to the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, critics described the film as having "Avatar-level visual effects", complemented by "standout performances and top-notch action", although "it doesn't quite meet the heights of its predecessors".

The site's critics consensus reads: "Carving out a new era for The Planet of the Apes with lovable characters and rich visuals, Kingdom doesn't take the crown as best of the franchise but handily justifies its continued reign.

"[78] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

[81] Ty Burr of The Washington Post praised the film's visuals, describing the computer generated primates as "breathtakingly hyper-real".

[82] Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent called the film "traditional and robustly crafted, in a way that's deferential less to the trends of today than to some half-remembered dream of Hollywood's classical epics".

[83] Charles Pulliam-Moore of The Verge disliked the tendency of the plot to lay the ground for "sequels down the line [rather] than to really dig into the substance at hand".

[84] Jake Wilson of The Age gave it 2/5 stars, writing, "Plainly, this is not a movie to be taken too seriously, but at nearly two-and-a-half hours, it's also much too slow and ponderous to qualify as a campy good time.