Peter Jackson Reveals Lost Planet of the Apes Reboot

2 Minutes

Imagine Roddy McDowall's character reborn as a Leonardo da Vinci figure inside a Planet of the Apes movie. Peter Jackson says that highly unusual pitch—titled The Renaissance of the Planet of the Apes—was real and almost made it to development.

The Apes franchise has had an odd journey. Tim Burton's 2001 remake cleared the box office with $362 million on a $100 million budget but never managed to seed a new saga. It wasn't until 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes that the series truly returned to form, followed by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes. Rumors now suggest Disney is eyeing another take that won't tie into the Rise timeline, but Jackson's abandoned vision would have taken the franchise down a very different alley.

Long before The Lord of the Rings made his name, Jackson and Fran Walsh put pen to paper on an audacious concept. Their treatment envisioned reviving one of the classic series' most recognizable figures—Roddy McDowall's presence, reimagined as a genius artist-inventor whose role would reshape the Apes mythos. It was less a straight reboot and more a tonal reset: cultured, uncanny, and oddly human.

So why did it die? Big names. The project already had heavy hitters attached — James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger among them — and Jackson admits that their involvement made it hard for him to see room for his own directorial voice. He hadn't even met Cameron at the time, which only complicated matters. Jackson candidly felt he wouldn't have real creative control and that directing a movie stacked with such towering personalities would be a hollow exercise.

He chose to walk away rather than surrender the story to others. That decision sent him in other directions, toward the films that would define his career.

What remains intriguing is the ripple effect of that lost script. A Planet of the Apes starring a Da Vinci-like figure could have rewritten the franchise's DNA. Instead, Jackson's draft joins the handful of tantalizing near-misses in Hollywood lore—projects that prompt fans to ask, with equal parts curiosity and regret: what might have been?