Very sketchy early details over at Deadline Hollywood, but it sounds as if Rupert Wyatt, writer/director of the award-winning prison drama The Escapist and currently attached to the Sebastian Faulks adaptation Birdsong, is close to signing on for the Planet of the Apes prequel / reboot, once known around these parts as Caesar.
In its original form, gestating for several years and never quite getting anywhere, this project was some sort of remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth film in the original series, detailing the original Ape revolution against humankind. Producer Scott Rudin and writer Scott Frank walked away from it at the start of this year, after Frank’s script was judged by the studio Fox as too expensive and too dark to be feasible. But it was picked up by Peter Chernin of Chernin Entertainment, with Jamie Moss (Street Kings,Ghost in the Shell, X-Men First Class) reworking the script.
There's no longer any mention of Moss in DH's story though, with the screenplay now credited to Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The Relic). Whether this still bears any relation to the Caesar concept remains to be seen, but three writers on, it seems likely that the script already bears little resemblence to Franks' interesting sounding take on the material. Here's hoping a class act like Wyatt can keep this from descending to 2002 levels.