In 2019, after his three Maze Runner films grossed nearly $1 billion on a $156 million spend, Ball was days away from production on 20th Century Fox’s Mouse Guard adaptation, but then the Disney-Fox merger abruptly canceled his ambitious mocap-centric project that counted Reeves and Serkis as producer and actor, respectively. However, later that year, Ball got a call from 20th’s longtime president of production, Emma Watts, which he believes was her way to make amends for Mouse Guard’s collapse. 　　“Yeah, that’s probably what it was … Emma Watts called me and said, ‘Sorry about the Mouse Guard thing, but what would you do with the next Planet of the Apes?’” Ball tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So it took me a minute to get my head around that idea. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do until we found our way into something that I thought was worthy of following up the previous three.” 　　Ball’s way into a new potential trilogy began with the aforementioned time jump where different clans of apes now reside in their own villages, including the Eagle Clan and their sheltered yet serene existence alongside their loyal eagle companions. Noa (Owen Teague), a sensitive young chimpanzee, is on the verge of adulthood within the Eagle Clan when Proximus Caesar’s (Kevin Durand) coastal clan of hostile apes pillages his family’s community, forcing him to go on a journey where he finally learns about the real world and who the real Caesar was from the learned orangutan, Raka (Peter Macon), and who he wasn’t from the power-hungry bonobo, Proximus. 　　The kicker is that Noa also encounters a seemingly feral human, but she’s really an intelligent young woman named Mae (Freya Allan), establishing that this new potential trilogy won’t be an ape story that resets its human cast with each movie like the prior trilogy of the 2010s.

In 2019, after his three Maze Runner films grossed nearly $1 billion on a $156 million spend, Ball was days away from production on 20th Century Fox’s Mouse Guard adaptation, but then the Disney-Fox merger abruptly canceled his ambitious mocap-centric project that counted Reeves and Serkis as producer and actor, respectively. However, later that year, Ball got a call from 20th’s longtime president of production, Emma Watts, which he believes was her way to make amends for Mouse Guard’s collapse. 　　“Yeah, that’s probably what it was … Emma Watts called me and said, ‘Sorry about the Mouse Guard thing, but what would you do with the next Planet of the Apes?’” Ball tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So it took me a minute to get my head around that idea. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do until we found our way into something that I thought was worthy of following up the previous three.” 　　Ball’s way into a new potential trilogy began with the aforementioned time jump where different clans of apes now reside in their own villages, including the Eagle Clan and their sheltered yet serene existence alongside their loyal eagle companions. Noa (Owen Teague), a sensitive young chimpanzee, is on the verge of adulthood within the Eagle Clan when Proximus Caesar’s (Kevin Durand) coastal clan of hostile apes pillages his family’s community, forcing him to go on a journey where he finally learns about the real world and who the real Caesar was from the learned orangutan, Raka (Peter Macon), and who he wasn’t from the power-hungry bonobo, Proximus. 　　The kicker is that Noa also encounters a seemingly feral human, but she’s really an intelligent young woman named Mae (Freya Allan), establishing that this new potential trilogy won’t be an ape story that resets its human cast with each movie like the prior trilogy of the 2010s.

Astronaut Taylor crash lands on a distant planet ruled by apes who use a primitive race of humans for experimentation and sport. Soon Taylor finds himself among the hunted, his life in the hands of a benevolent chimpanzee scientist.

A group of scientists in San Francisco struggle to stay alive in the aftermath of a plague that is wiping out humanity, while Caesar tries to maintain dominance over his community of intelligent apes.

In a futuristic world that has embraced ape slavery, a chimpanzee named Caesar resurfaces after almost twenty years of hiding from the authorities, and prepares for a revolt against humanity.

Human astronauts Burke and Virdon, with their chimp companion Galen, are forced to become involved in the strange gladiatorial games of the district run by prefect Tolar. The trio escape the gorilla police and find an abandoned government research project with a computer containing a vast amount of recording information about the old human-ruled world. [The second of five telefilms edited from episodes of the 1974 TV series; this film combines the episodes "The Gladiators" and "The Legacy"]

Caesar and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel. After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet.

The world is shocked by the appearance of three talking chimpanzees, who arrived mysteriously in a spacecraft. Intrigued by their intelligence, humans use them for research - until the apes attempt to escape.

When the astronauts Burke and Virdon, with their chimp companion Galen, are captured in a fishing village that employs human slave labor, they must prove their worth as fishermen or be sacrificed to the 'gods of the sea,' or what the men call sharks. Escaping from the forced labor camp, the trio become involved in a plot to develop a glider to drop a fragmentation bomb on the gorilla council. [The fifth of five telefilms edited from episodes of the 1974 TV series; this film combines the episodes "Tomorrow's Tide" and "Up Above the World So High"]

Astronauts Pete Burke and Allan Virdon crash on Earth in the far future and are captured by the apes. The men befriend a chimp named Galen who helps them to escape. In the hopes of finding a way to get back to their own time, the astronauts search for a computer in an earthquake-threatened city, with which they will be able to access their flight records. [The first of five telefilms edited from episodes of the 1974 TV series; this film combines the episodes "Escape from Tomorrow" and "The Trap"]