I find this very surprising. That's not to say I don't believe it, I most definitely do - after all, nothing FOX does these days should surprise anyone - but it just doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Considering their last stab at rebooting the "Planet of the Apes" franchise resulted in quite a few job losses and a big dint in the studio wallet, why would Rothman's guys even want to try again? Is there not another "X-Men" spin-off film they can develop? Maybe the guy who shoots fire from his fingers? Surely there's a quick-buck video-game movie they can rush into development?

Maybe I'm just scared they'll fuck this up like they did the last one?

According to CHUD, FOX have been quietly developing a remake of "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" for the past twelve months or so.

Now this isn't a sequel to the Tim Burton film -in fact chronologically, it'd be a prequel to the previous film - and in fact it probably won't share many similiarties at all with it, well, besides the fact the stars are monkeys.

For those that don't recall, "Conquest" told the story of 'Caesar' (Roddy McDowall), the first ape to talk.

In a futuristic society where ape slavery has taken over the world, Caesar, the son of the late simians Cornelius and Zira, surfaces after almost 20 years in hiding out from the authorities, and prepares for a slave revolt against humanity

There's some differences between this new version and the old script - for a start, "Conquest" was set in a future America, a fascist society, where as this new version is set today - and as a consequence its been renamed to "Genesis : Apes".

As much as I'm bewildered by FOX's enthusiasm to restart the "Apes" franchise, again - or maybe I just wish it was another studio handling it - this does sound like a pretty nifty idea. And so long as Burton and Mark Wahlberg go nowhere near it, a few people just might actually catch it.

CHUD has more