The holiday season is upon us, so it’s time to start looking into some of the year’s best book releases to give to your loved ones. This year sees many selections to choose from for fans of properties like Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, Dracula, and Frankenstein and authors like Anne Rice and J.R.R. Tolkien; tie-ins for Die Hard, Planet Of The Apes, The Walking Dead,, and Stranger Things, as well as titles by authors like Raymond E. Feist, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Grady Hendrix, and R.A. Salvatore.

Check out here below our Holiday Geek Gift Guide 2018 for Books, eBooks, and Audiobooks for our favorite holiday gift picks for this year for the reader in your life.

Planet Of The Apes: Visionaries
Hardcover | Kindle
Original screenplay by Rod Serling
Adapted by Dana Gould
Art by Chad Lewis
Inks Assist by David Wilson
Colors by Darrin Moore, Miquel Muerto, Marcelo Costa
Letters by Ed Dukeshire
Cover by Paolo Rivera
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Release date: August 28, 2018

Imagine if Planet Of The Apes‘s Ape City had been a New York City-like metropolis and its simian inhabitants much more technologically advanced. That is what Rod Serling had in mind when he penned a screenplay from Pierre Boulle’s novel for the 1968 film for 20th Century Fox. But the studio felt Serling’s adaptation would be too costly to translate to the big screen, so they hired Michael Wilson (who had previously adapted Boulle’s The Bridge over the River Kwai) to rewrite the dialogue and revise the script to give the apes a more primitive society. Now, Serling’s original vision has been brought to life in Planet Of The Apes: Visionaries, a new graphic novel from BOOM! Studios.

A trailer was released recently for an upcoming video game set in the Planet of the Apes universe titled Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier.

The game comes from Andy Serkis, who plays Caesar in the rebooted Planet of the Apes movie franchise, and the performance capture studio he co-founded, The Imaginarium Studios. It’s described as a cinematic adventure game in which you’ll play as both apes and humans, making decisions which will help determine how the story plays out. The story is set between the events of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and the recent War for the Planet of the Apes.

In addition to the trailer, some gameplay footage is also available to watch. Both can be found below.

War for the Planet of the Apes
Director: Matt Reeves
Screenwriter: Mark Bomback, Matt Reeves
Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Amiah Miller, Karin Konoval, Judy Greer, Terry Notary
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rated PG-13 | 142 Minutes
Release Date: July 14, 2017

“Apes. Together. Strong.”

In 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a scientific experiment gives rise to a species of intelligent apes, and a virus that brings humanity to the brink of extinction. The sentient apes flourish in the absence of humans until they’re discovered by a small band of survivors in 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. The species struggle to coexist, but their fragile peace is shattered by Koba, a former lab chimp so consumed with hatred for the humans that he betrays his leader, the noble chimpanzee Caesar, to incite war against them.

Enter War for the Planet of the Apes, the third and final chapter of 20th Century Fox’s critically acclaimed series. Directed by Matt Reeves (of Cloverfield, Let Me In, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), War delivers a powerful and poignant climax to one of the greatest film trilogies of all time, with complex characters, soulful performances, and the most impressive special effects I’ve ever seen. Not only is it one of the best movies of the summer, it’s one of the best films of 2017 “” an unparalleled work of blockbuster filmmaking that is as thought-provoking as it is awe-inspiring.

War for the Planet of the Apes: Revelations
The Official Movie Prequel
By Greg Keyes
Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
Publisher: Titan Books
Release date: June 6, 2017

In 2011, FOX’s successfully rebooted the Planet of the Apes film franchise with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which centered on Caesar, a genetically enhanced chimpanzee born in an animal-testing lab whose early life is spent with a human family. Excellently mo-cap performed by Lord Of The Rings star Andy Serkis, Caesar struggled to find his place amongst humans, and then eventually landed in an abusive animal shelter before leading a revolt of his fellow apes against their human handlers. In 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel set ten years after the events of Rise, the human race had been nearly wiped out by a virus that in turn made the apes more intelligent. Here, Caesar tried to keep the peace between his ape tribe and the human survivors, but it became clear that war was coming. Which brings us to the upcoming War for the Planet of the Apes.