Coming on the heels of the underperforming The Fall Guy last week; from a box office perspective and what it augurs for the immediate future of cinema, it’ll be interesting to watch what happens when this IP (intellectual property) installment hits the cinema screens this week. The Fall Guy was budgeted at $130 million; it was an original concept, reviewed favorably by critics, and had Ryan Gosling as its lead star. And yet, it stumbled at the gates with a dismal $28 million first US weekend.

Here is the umpteenth installment of a proven film franchise, and it’s the start of a new narrative strain. Caesar is dead, and the events of this Kingdom of the Planet occur several generations after Caesar’s death. In that sense, while there will be characters with connections to the previous narrative, this introduces us to a new set of protagonists. So, if this succeeds, expect the franchise to just keep churning out new chapters.

Hollywood is already in a safety-first mode; we have Furiosa, a Mad Max saga, up next. Then there’s Deadpool and Wolverine, Inside Out 2, Alien Romulus, and, towards the end of the year, Mufasa, a Lion King story. So, with Fall Guy having tanked, you can bet your bottom dollar that everyone in Hollywood will fall back on established IPs, and it’s only the independent production houses who’ll gamble on new concepts. Sad, but inevitable.

And so what does Kingdom of the Planet actually offer? A first act that’s slow on the start, and seems to be seeking a more sure-footed manner to introduce us to Noa, a young chimp who’ll be carrying this new Planet of the Apes iteration. Saving the film is the story-telling in the middle act, and a decent, thundering final act. Thankfully, this last half of the film plays savior and allows us to feel we’ve been entertained. As a result, we do invest in the unfolding Noa storyline.

Directed by Wes Ball and written by Josh Friedman, Owen Teague leads the cast as Noa, and there’s Freya Allen as the human Mae/Nova. The new heavy of the film would be the self-proclaimed bonobo ruler of the new Ape kingdom, Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), and the main connection to the previous installments would be orangutan Raka (Peter Macon).

Fourth installment of the reboot franchise, Kingdom is actually the 10th film overall. Got to watch the advanced screening at the IMAX at SM Megamall, and that really helped me get through the aforementioned slow start. It’s scenic, expansive filmmaking, and the IMAX theater helped accentuate that.