Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes to release alternate version of entire movie with a big twist

Kayla Harrington
Noa, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

While Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has yet to hit theaters, its director has revealed plans for an alternate version of the movie — and it’ll look a lot different than the one you see in cinemas.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes director Wes Ball already has a fun twist in store for the movie’s home release: a full-length version with no CGI.

While chatting with Ape Nation, Ball explained that the movie’s Blu-ray edition will include a cut of the movie where viewers can see the actors in mo-cap (motion capture) and nothing else.

“I’m doing a little thing for the DVD where you can watch the movie — the entire movie — with the raw dailies,” Ball said. “I’m working on that, where you’ll be able to watch and see both the final [cut] and the raw dailies. You can see how close they get, what they do, and how they stitch everything together. It’s amazing, and you can just sit there and enjoy it.”

The director continued, “I’ll do some commentary over it with Erik [Winquist], our VFX [supervisor]. I think it’s gonna be great. For geeks like us, it’s gonna be a first. They’ve never seen this kind of thing. Some of the hardest stuff in VFX is how you get CG characters to interact with others. So we have a human girl hugging a CG ape and it’s like, ‘How do you do that?'” 

Ball’s decision to give audiences a peek behind the curtain which it comes to the franchise’s VFX effects is incredibly interesting as all of the reboot movies have been nominated for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars, so this will give fans a chance to watch the magic at work.

Ball’s decision to give audiences a peek behind the VFX curtain comes after the rebooted trilogy’s hat-trick of Oscar nominations for Best Visual Effects.

You can see Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes in its full VFX glory on May 9 in the UK and May 10 in the US.

In the meantime, you can keep up to date on the awesome movies heading into theaters this month.