The sci-fi franchise that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Oliver Stone almost ruined

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The first five “Planet of the Apes” films were released in theaters between 1968 and 1973, but in those five short years, the franchise went from massive success to still modest success. 1973’s “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” was fairly profitable, but its box office receipts were meager compared to the 1968 film that started it all. So, in 1974, the property moved to television with the 14-episode television show “Planet of the Apes.” A year later, the franchise regained momentum with the 13-episode animated series “Return to the Planet of the Apes.” Only then does the brand take a break.

In the early 1980s, however, 20th Century Fox decided it was time to begin developing a reboot of “Planet of the Apes.” The project quickly entered development hell, passing through different hands and being shelved for most of the next decade. Then, in 1988, screenwriter Adam Rifkin (then just 21 years old) made a deal with Fox to revive the franchise and write a sequel to the 1968 film “Planet of the Apes” which ignored other sequels. That film, also called “Return to the Planet of the Apes,” was rewritten several times before being similarly sent to the chopping block.

Then came the most notorious reboot attempt of all. Fans of “Planet of the Apes” may already be aware of Oliver Stone’s attempt to revive the franchise with a film he simply wanted to call “Return of the Apes” in the early 1990s. Stone was to produce the film, Phillip Noyce (whose many credits include the Denzel Washington-directed “The Bone Collector”) was to direct, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was to star as a scientist who battles apes on a long journey into time.

Many of the details of Stone’s potential film “Planet of the Apes” were covered in the 1998 book “Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics and Popular Culture” by Eric Greene, as well as a 2001 edition of the magazine’s “Planet of the Apes Chronicles.” The story goes that Stone hired screenwriter Terry Hayes (“The Road Warrior,” “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome,” “Dead Calm”) to write the screenplay, and the duo caught the attention of Schwarzenegger in mid-1994.

The plot of “Return of the Apes” was twisted and twisted through history. Its storyline began in the near future, in which humanity was dying due to an incurable progeria-like plague. Schwarzenegger was to play Will Robinson, a geneticist who discovers that the virus had been artificially implanted in humans in the Stone Age and was only now activating. Will recruits his friend, a pregnant woman named Bille Rae Diamond, and they travel back in time approximately 100,000 years to the Paleolithic period to investigate. The time travel device they use to do this is closer to a psychedelic sensory deprivation tank (a la Ken Russell’s sci-fi horror film “Altered States”) than to an HG Wells-style time machine.

Upon arrival, Will and Billie discover that the humans of this primitive era are locked in a war against super-advanced, highly intelligent apes who have already invented steam engines. Will is then captured by the apes and discovers an entire society of apes at work on Earth. The apes have both a government led by a president and an organized religion led by an angry monkey priest. Priest Magog deeply hates humans, which is why the apes designed a virus designed to kill all humanity.

“Return of the Apes” ultimately features a human child born with immunity to the virus created by the apes. There are also numerous scenes of Will sneaking through jungles and uniting various human tribes to wage war against the apes. Additionally, the script includes characters named Aragorn, Magog, Nazgul and Strider, as well as an area called Middle Earth. Obviously, Stone and Co. had read a lot of “Lord of the Rings.” And unlike other “Ape” films, “Revenes of the Apes” was going to exclusively feature gorillas, not chimpanzees or orangutans.

Eventually, it turns out that Will Robinson is not Will’s real name. He’s actually Robert Plant, a disgraced scientist who accidentally killed some of his colleagues during a sensory deprivation experiment and had to change his identity to continue working, choosing “Will Robinson” because he was (sigh) “lost in space.” The fact that Plant shares a name with the Led Zeppelin guy is apparently a coincidence.

As crazy as it sounds, Fox reportedly loved Hayes’ script and even contacted Stan Winston to handle the monkey effects. The reason the project failed was also rather fanciful. It appears that a Fox producer wanted Hayes to incorporate more comedy into his script, including – at their insistence – a scene where Will teaches some monkeys to play baseball. It seemed the studio wanted a crowd-pleasing comedy, not some weird sci-fi war epic. Hayes hated the idea, however, and submitted a new draft without a baseball scene, which got him fired.

When that happened, Noyce dropped out as well, and Stone quickly followed suit. The project died because of monkey baseball. Hollywood is a twisted place.