King Kong To Challenge Rise of the Planet of the Apes?

News, Projects

Apes seem to be pretty popular all of a sudden. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is coming this summer, exciting many, and now the biggest ape of them all is a new project.

Fox Animation is trying to establish itself alongside Dreamworks and Pixar as a regular producer of animated content. After relaunching with Fantastic Mr. Fox, Fox Animation is going after a bigger target: King Kong.

Per Deadline, Fox Animation has set the team of Christian Magalhaes & Bob Snow to write a modern day twist on the King Kong story. It will be animated and will tell the story from the vantage point of the ape. Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps will produce with Ted Field’s Radar Pictures. Magalhaes & Snow’s recent spec script Murder of a Cat made the Black List and is in the process of being set up.

What does it mean? Kong’s been done a handful of times, both as remakes and sequels as well as loose adaptations of the story but with another name for the ape, but they all have one thing in common: It’s about the men, not the ape. No one has really gone to see the tale of the ape through his eyes as we always see the world through the eyes of the beauty and not the beast.

It’s fairly risky to try and accomplish BUT it says something about Fox Animation in that they’re not going to just join in the frey and carve out market share amongst children’s programming of the animated fare. It would be easy to just create a franchise and market it heavily; animating the tale of King Kong through the eyes of the beast is a gutsy call that could pay off.