[3] The novel is a satire that follows French journalist Ulysse Mérou, who participates in a voyage to a distant planet where speechless, animalistic humans are hunted and enslaved by an advanced society of apes.

[5] Boulle's literary agent, Allain Bernheim, brought the novel to the attention of American film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, who had come to Paris looking for properties to adapt with his new company, APJAC Productions.

He engaged a succession of artists to create test sketches and hired veteran television writer Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, to pen the screenplay.

[7][8] Serling's script changed elements of Boulle's novel, introducing Cold War themes; he devised a new twist ending that revealed the planet to be a future Earth where humans had destroyed themselves through nuclear warfare.

[10] The producers hired veteran writer Michael Wilson, who had previously adapted Boulle's novel The Bridge over the River Kwai, to rewrite Serling's script.

Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall played the sympathetic chimpanzees Zira and Cornelius, and Linda Harrison portrayed Taylor's love interest, Nova.

[32][33] Following the financial success of Beneath, Arthur P. Jacobs recruited Paul Dehn to write a new script with a brief telegram: "Apes exist, sequel required."

[48][49] Battle continued Conquest's focus on racial conflict and domination but, likely based in part on the studio's wishes, the Corringtons discarded Dehn's pessimistic treatment in favor of a story with a more hopeful, though ambiguous, resolution.

It earned low ratings during its run, a fact the production team attributed to repetitive storytelling and too little screen time for the apes who made the franchise famous.

[63] The plot concerns three American astronauts, Bill Hudson (Tom Williams), Jeff Allen (Austin Stoker, who played MacDonald in Battle) and Judy Franklin (Claudette Nevins), who inadvertently journey to Earth's far future.

The cast featured characters based on those from the previous films and TV series, including Nova (Nevins again), General Urko (Henry Cordin), Zira (Philippa Harris), Cornelius (Edwin Mills) and Dr. Zaius (Richard Blackburn).

At one point, executive Dylan Sellers insisted the script include a comic scene involving apes playing baseball as his "stamp" on the film and fired Hayes when he left it out.

[71] The film stars Mark Wahlberg as astronaut Leo Davidson, who accidentally travels through a wormhole to a distant planet where talking apes enslave humans.

[74] Fox had initially hoped for a sequel, but the difficult production left Burton unenthusiastic about participating, and the film failed to generate enough interest for the studio to pursue a follow-up.

He and Silver pitched the concept to Fox as a way to reboot the Apes franchise by reinventing the story of the chimpanzee Caesar, the lead character of Conquest and Battle.

[86][87][88] Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver returned to pen the script and produce and the studio quickly signed Andy Serkis to reprise his role as Caesar.

[91] Released on July 11, 2014, the film was very well received by critics, who found it a strong follow-up to Rise and lauded the combination of an engaging script with impressive special effects.

released a graphic novel, Planet of the Apes: Visionaries, adapted by Dana Gould and Chad Lewis from the original 1968 film's unused screenplay by Rod Serling.

During the 1970s, Fox licensed around 60 companies to produce about 300 different Apes products, including action figures and playsets, model building kits, coloring books, book-and-record sets, trading cards, toy weapons, costumes, apparel, branded tableware, and lunch boxes.

[139] Eric Greene writes that Apes toys were popular enough to lead some contemporary children to engage in apes-vs.-humans role-playing make believe games that simulated the series' conflicts in a manner similar to "Cowboys and Indians".

[138] With the release of the 21st-century films, Fox licensed several companies to manufacture new Apes toys, including detailed action figures of new and "classic" characters sold as collectibles.

Despite its long development, the game missed the debut of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes film by two months;[145] it finally appeared on September 20, 2001, to mostly negative reviews.

[144][149] In 2014, Fox partnered with Ndemic Creations on a substantial Dawn of the Planet of the Apes–themed update to the mobile game Plague Inc. Players create and spread a "simian flu" virus to eradicate humans while helping apes survive.

[8] Eric Greene, author of a book on the role of race in the original films and spinoff material, writes that "when seen as one epic work, the Apes saga emerges as a liberal allegory of racial conflict.

[170][171] The films critique both sides of the war, with the oppressive ape society and the underground mutant city featuring traits of both Western culture and the Soviet bloc.

[20] Fans' interest in the franchise continued through publications like Marvel Comics' Planet of the Apes magazine[133] and science fiction conventions, where the series was sufficiently popular to inspire "apecons"—conventions devoted entirely to films involving apes—in the 1970s.

[20] In the 1970s, fans Bill Blake and Paula Crist created Cornelius and Zira costumes; their routine was convincing enough that Fox licensed them to portray the characters at events.

[180] In terms of content, the series influenced various films and television productions during the 1970s and 1980s that used science fiction settings and characters to explore race relations, including Alien Nation, Enemy Mine, and V. More direct influence can be seen in DC Comics' 1972–1978 series Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth and the Japanese franchise Time of the Apes, which concern human protagonists in post-apocalyptic worlds ruled by talking animals.

Greene attributes this renewed interest to a combination of "pop culture nostalgia and baby boomer economics", as well as a "political ferment" rising at the time that hearkened back to the period when the films were first released.

Planet of the Apes turned up in songs by various musicians, allusions in films, comedy bits by Dennis Miller and Paul Mooney, and an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Charlton Heston.