Matt Reeves has been officially confirmed for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel to the hit 2011 movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Reeves is confirmed for the job after recent reports that he was on 20th Century Fox’s shortlist of directors. A new director was needed after the first film’s director, Rupert Wyatt, had to step away from the sequel due to not feeling he could deliver a quality product in the time he was being given.

Jurassic Park 4 has been a long, long, long-gestating project. It is actually surprising to see that we have gone through a movie without dinosaurs chasing humans as tasty morsels. But for those who have been waiting for so long, their patience has been rewarded. And depending on how you look at it, they have been rewarded in spades.

According to Deadline, Universal has hired Rise of the Planet of the Apes writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver to pen the long-awaited Jurassic Park sequel.

Twentieth Century Fox is busy putting together the pieces for a sequel to last summer’s blockbuster prequel, Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

It’s being reported that Fox has found a new writer, bringing in Scott Z. Burns to work on the project. Burns’ previous works include The Bourne Ultimatum, The Informant!, and Contagion.

Released last August, Rise of the Planet of the Apes overcame months of lackluster buzz to become one of the year’s unexpected blockbusters. It was the first truly great film in the Apes franchise since 1972’s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and it benefited strongly from the central performance by Andy Serkis as the intelligent ape Caesar and the revolutionary motion-capture CGI used to bring the character to life. Although the actor’s performance was overlooked at Oscar time (as many great performances tend to be) the film’s impact on audiences and critics around the world was undeniable.

Rise‘s $468 million worldwide gross all but guaranteed additional sequels and in November we reported that Serkis had signed on to reprise the role of Caesar in a future return to the Planet of the Apes for a seven-figure salary. Director Rupert Wyatt was also set to return as his original contract for Rise contained an option for a sequel, with Rise screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver writing the script for the next Apes movie.

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).