News Planet of the Apes Matt Shakman Is the Next Director to Visit the Planet of the Apes Franchise Perhaps he too will find his destiny on the Planet of the Apes By Molly Templeton | Published on May 7, 2026 Image: 20th Century Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Image: 20th Century Studios You can’t keep a good ape down, I guess. It’s been almost two years since the last time humanity—or at least moviegoers—ventured into the Planet of the Apes series, in 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. That film, directed by Wes Ball (who’s now busy with The Legend of Zelda), was a potential trilogy-starter set 300 years after the previous Apes movie. Now, a new film is in the works, though it’s entirely unclear if it will follow that narrative path or head in some new direction. Variety has the news that Fantastic Four director Matt Shakman will shift from superheroes to super-apes for the next film in the franchise. He’s reteaming with Fantastic Four: First Steps screenwriter Josh Friedman, who also wrote Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes—which certainly suggests that the potential trilogy may become a reality. But plot details might as well be on another planet. As Variety notes, Friedman is “a company man” for 20th Century Fox, which has been making all these monkey movies. He has story credits on the last two Avatar movies, which he worked on with Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa, who are shifting from writing roles to producing roles on the Apes films (the pair were key in the franchise’s return to screens, developing and writing 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes). Shakman, of course, also directed WandaVision. In the wake of that show’s success, he was tapped to direct a new Star Trek film—but clearly that film series remains grounded. Other than Fantastic Four, Shakman has done a ton of TV work that ranges from Game of Thrones to You’re the Worst to The Boys to Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. No timeline has been announced for the new Apes film.[end-mark] The post Matt Shakman Is the Next Director to Visit the <i>Planet of the Apes</i> Franchise appeared first on Reactor.