Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has big plans for the sci-fi drama sequel's home entertainment release. In a new interview with Ape Nation, the filmmaker revealed that the film's Blu-ray will feature a copy of the entire movie without CGI, so that we can see the actors' performances in the mo-cap suits and Weta's impressive VFX work.
"I'm doing a little thing for the DVD where you can watch the movie – the entire movie – with the raw dailies," Ball explained. "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.
"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," he continued enthusiastically. "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?'"
Set almost 300 years after the events of 2017's War for the Planet of the Apes, Kingdom sees feral young woman Mae team up with young chimpanzee Noa to thwart the plans of tyrannical ape leader Proximus Caesar, who has twisted the legendary Caesar's teachings and enslaved a bunch of chimpanzees in his hunt for the last traces of human technologies. The Witcher's Freya Allan, Abigail's Kevin Durand, and It's Owen Teague star.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes lands in cinemas on May 9 in the UK, and May 10 in the US. While we wait, check out our picks of the biggest upcoming movies heading our way.
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I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things TV and film across our Total Film and SFX sections. Elsewhere, my words have been published by the likes of Digital Spy, SciFiNow, PinkNews, FANDOM, Radio Times, and Total Film magazine.