The digital movie rental of the day over at Amazon today is Rise of the Planet of the Apes for only $.99.

This deal is valid through today, Tuesday, April 3, 2012, until 11:59pm PST. Once you activate the rental through Amazon’s Instant Video on demand service, you’ll have access to the movie for 48 hours. If you’re interested in purchasing the digital version, the cost is $14.99.

Also, if you’d like to own a physical copy of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the Blu-ray/DVD Combo Edition is available for $19.99 while the DVD is $15.49. The Blu-ray edition is part of Amazon’s “Buy This DVD and Watch it Instantly” program “” you get the film as a FREE digital rental you can watch immediately when your purchase the physical copy.

The Blu-ray box set deal over at Amazon is Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray for only $39.99 (down 50% from the list price of $79.99).

This 5-disc Blu-ray set includes all five Planet Of The Apes movies — Planet Of The Apes (the original 1968 version starring Charlton Heston and those damn dirty apes), Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, Escape From The Planet Of The Apes, Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, and Battle For The Planet Of The Apes, along with a host of bonus features with new features in high definition and a 200-page hardbound oversized book.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes arrives on DVD and Blu-ray today. In conjunction with the release, street artist Anthony Lister created a huge Apes-inspired mural in Los Angeles.

The Australian-born street artist worked throughout the nights over this past weekend to complete the piece.

Check out the time-lapsed video here below of Lister’s creation of this mural from start to finish; there’s also a video of Lister talking about his mural and the film that includes some b-roll footage and soundclips from the film.

Having just hired a writer for their planned sequel to X-Men: First Class, 20th Century Fox is also moving forward with a sequel to another one of their hit summer movies, Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The studio reached a deal with performance capture king Andy Serkis to reprise his role as Caesar the ape, which will see him paid a hefty seven-figure sum. Serkis is the man to see when it comes to performance capture work, having given life to characters like Gollum and Kong in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, and it’s exciting to see the man score some big paydays (he was paid well to return for The Hobbit as well).

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (read my review HERE ) took the top spot at the weekend box office, pulling in $54 million in just its first three days of release. This is good news for 20th Century Fox and the filmmakers, who had a continuing film franchise in mind when creating the latest movie. Rise director Rupert Wyatt has a few interesting ideas of his own regarding a possible sequel.

In an interview with Bleeding Cool, Wyatt said he has a wide range of ideas for a sequel, one of which would be “Full Metal Jacket with apes.” (Continue reading for Wyatt’s ideas and note, if you haven’t seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes, some of the content could be considered Spoilers.)