With retail outlets scaling back physical releases of films, it is heartening to see a director so excited about working on Blu-ray special features. Wes Ball, director of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes opened up to YouTube’s Ape Nation about his imminent picture. Special features have also not been a focus in physical releases as they had been a decade ago. Instead of feature-length commentaries, it is more common to see short featurettes and brief supplementary content. Planet of the Apes fans, however, have more to look forward to. Ball said:

“I’m doing a little thing for the DVD where you can watch the movie — the entire movie — with the raw dailies. I’m working on that, where you’ll be able to watch and see the final [cut] and the raw dailies. You can see how close they get, what they do, and how they stitch everything together. It’s amazing, and you can just sit there and enjoy it.”

This content is for die-hard fans of the films who are interested in the nitty-gritty of how it was made. He continued, “I’ll do some commentary over it with Erik [Winquist], our VFX [supervisor]. I think it’s gonna be great. For geeks like us, it’s gonna be a first. They’ve never seen this kind of thing.” It will also be a point of interest for fans who want to see the differences between the actors who motion-capped the different ape characters and the final product. Most of the characters in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes are the titular species, with only a few human characters featured in the teaser not requiring this technology.

‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Is a VFX Wonderland

“Some of the hardest stuff in VFX is how you get the CG characters to interact with others. So we have a human girl hugging a CG ape, and it’s like, ‘How do you do that?’ It’s amazing stuff,” Ball said. While heavy-duty special features like these are few and far between, this will be a treat for fans of the franchise as well as movie buffs. This type of content could be the very thing to encourage viewers to add Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes to their home collection.

If there is one film to delve into the machinations of the special effects for, it’s this one. The Maze Runner director worked early in his career in visual effects, and his excitement about releasing an inside look at the world of the apes is palpable. Ball later restrained himself from revealing too much about the upcoming release, so there may be more features to come. In the meantime, viewers should catch Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes when it premieres in theaters, on May 10, 2024.

via Collider