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.)

Check out Episode 29 of the Flix of Doom podcast, the official movie podcast of Geeks of Doom, with hosts Justin Vactor, Michael Merlob, and Will Melton.

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As we amble into the unofficial final month of the summer movie season, Rise of the Planet of the Apes beckons us with its big hairy paw to enjoy the mayhem of the final huge release of the summer. If you miss Rise, you have only yourself to blame as the rest of August feels like the leftovers no one wants to eat so they’ll be put in the back of the refrigerator until they get moldy as…

…you’re going to have to prefab your excuse right now to miss The Help as it’s placed in the exact same release slot that Eat Pray Love was in last year, and you’ve regretted the 5 hours you wasted watching that, haven’t you? You’ve been warned. Remember, racism is bad and Blacks and Whites and ________ [insert an oppressed minority here] working together is good, so you’ve gotten the Very Important Lesson from The Help so you really don’t need to see it.

…it really hasn’t been good summer for Ryan Reynolds has it? And this is from someone who was relatively neutral about Green Lantern. But when The Change-Up (despite Olivia Wilde) can barely beat out the Hangover remake, um, sequel, as an R-rated comedy, then you know you’ve got problems that not even Jason Bateman can solve.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Directed by Rupert Wyatt
Starring James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Andy Serkis, David Oyelowo, Brian Cox, Tom Felton
Release Date: August 5, 2011

Next to Star Trek the Planet of the Apes series is my favorite science-fiction and adventure film franchise by far. I can watch each one of the films, even the lesser sequels like Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, and come away with something new to think of every time. Each film was a bold and heady Molotov cocktail of intriguing ideas, complex characters, pitch-black satire, and rousing adventure. With the exception of Battle, none of the films ever reached a fully optimistic conclusion, and despite some last-minute tinkering not even the ending of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was all sunshine and relaxed laughter. The movies were all about the downfall of the human race, brought down by their own imperial arrogance and replaced in the pecking order by the highly evolved apes once treated as pets and slave labor by the ruling elite. It’s certainly one of the most influential series of films in the history of the medium, the original genre franchise, and a merchandising powerhouse years before Star Wars and Harry Potter even existed.

Even though the series reached its end in 1973 with Battle, the Apes franchise endured for decades to come; there was an ill-advised attempt to relaunch the Apes film series in 2001 with the Tim Burton-directed “reimagining” of the original Planet of the Apes and attempts to keep the Planet of the Apes thriving in live-action and animated television that never had achieved the impact of the films. Now the series is getting another shot in the arm with the long-awaited prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which approaches the legend of the Planet of the Apes from an interesting new direction.