Remaking, Not Aping, an Original

Producer Richard Zanuck's involvement in the new "Planet of the Apes" is one of those "only in Hollywood" stories. Without him, there would never have been an original "Planet of the Apes." In 1967, when he was running 20th Century Fox, Zanuck was approached by a former publicist turned producer, Arthur Jacobs, with Rod Serling's screenplay adaptation of Pierre Boulle's novel. The project had been put in turnaround by Warner Bros., who he said "got scared of the idea" of a dominant ape culture with enslaved humans.

"When he [Jacobs] presented it to me, I didn't take it seriously," Zanuck remembers. "I only read it because of Serling [the mastermind of the classic "Twilight Zone" TV series] and because the writer of the book had also written 'Bridge on the River Kwai.' Even then I read it with skepticism."

But he became intrigued by the idea of an upside-down world. When Charlton Heston agreed to play the lead and Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and Edward G. Robinson accepted the prominent ape roles, Zanuck tentatively moved ahead. "I wasn't going to commit until we'd done makeup tests."

After the tests were satisfactorily completed, Robinson dropped out. "He said, 'I'm way too old to be getting into heavy makeup and eating through straws,"' Zanuck explains. (Robinson was replaced by Shakespearean actor Maurice Evans.)

Director Franklin Schaffner was signed to direct, despite misgivings that he might not be able to handle a "big" movie. At the time, Schaffner had worked mostly in television. Ironically, after "Planet of the Apes," Schaffner directed nothing but big movies, including the Oscar-winning "Patton."

That was just one of the many pleasant surprises in the history of "Planet of the Apes." Still not sure of what he had, Zanuck previewed the film for the first time in Phoenix. "If we could get by the first scene of talking apes and the audience didn't laugh hysterically, I knew we'd be OK," he recalls. The moment passed without incident and by the end of the preview the audience was applauding wildly and hanging around to discuss the film in the lobby afterward for the better part of an hour.

"I'd never seen anything like it before," Zanuck said.

'Planet" became one of Fox's biggest hits of the decade, grossing $34 million (on a $6-million budget) and spawning four sequels of decreasing quality and appeal, as well as two short-lived TV series in the mid '70s. In addition to its trendy anti-nuke message, which played into the late '60s counterculture movement, the film arrived around the same time as "2001: A Space Odyssey," helping fuel a science-fiction movie craze, spawning other films such as "The Omega Man" and "Soylent Green."