Origins Producer
Arthur P. Jacobs bought the rights for the
Pierre Boulle novel before its publication in 1963. Jacobs pitched the production to many studios, and in late 1964, the project was announced as a
Warner Bros. production, with
Blake Edwards attached to direct. After Jacobs made a successful debut as a producer doing
What a Way to Go! (1964) for
20th Century-Fox and begun pre-production of another film for the studio,
Doctor Dolittle, he managed to convince Fox vice president
Richard D. Zanuck to greenlight
Planet of the Apes. In March 1965, Edwards bowed out of the project due to "budgeting and production problems", and embarked a six-picture deal with
The Mirisch Company. One script that came close to being made was written by
The Twilight Zone creator
Rod Serling, though it was finally rejected for a number of reasons. A prime concern was cost, as the technologically advanced ape society portrayed by Serling's script would have involved expensive
sets,
props, and
special effects. Previously
blacklisted screenwriter
Michael Wilson was brought in to rewrite Serling's script, and as suggested by director Franklin J. Schaffner, the ape society was made more primitive as a way of reducing costs. Serling's stylized twist ending was retained, and became one of the most famous movie endings of all time. The exact location and state of decay of the Statue of Liberty changed over several
storyboards. One version depicted the statue buried up to its nose in the middle of a jungle, while another depicted the statue in pieces. Robinson wound up not joining the cast due to his declining health. Michael Wilson's rewrite kept the basic structure of Serling's screenplay, but rewrote all the dialogue and set the script in a more
primitive society. According to associate producer
Mort Abrahams, an additional uncredited writer (his only recollection was that the writer's last name was Kelly) polished the script, rewrote some of the dialogue, and included some of the more heavy-handed tongue-in-cheek dialogue ("I never met an ape I didn't like"), which was not in either Serling or Wilson's drafts. According to Abrahams, some scenes, such as the one where the judges imitate the "
see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil" monkeys, were improvised on the set by director Schaffner and kept in the final film because of the audience reaction during test screenings prior to release. During filming,
John Chambers, who designed prosthetic makeup in the film, held training sessions at 20th Century-Fox studios, where he mentored other makeup artists of the film.
Filming in
Glen Canyon. Filming began on May 21, 1967, and wrapped on August 10. Most of the early scenes of a desert-like terrain were shot in northern Arizona near the
Grand Canyon, the
Colorado River,
Lake Powell, As noted in the documentary
Behind the Planet of the Apes, Lou Wagner said that the makeup was particularly heavy in the area of the mouth and made it difficult to drink anything. At one point, Nova was decided to be pregnant, and scenes were filmed around the Page locations revealing Nova's pregnancy. In the penultimate drafts of
Planet of the Apes, Taylor was killed by the bullet of an ape sniper, while Nova, pregnant with Taylor's child, escaped and vanished into the Forbidden Zone. Although Harrison believed Heston rejected the idea of Nova's pregnancy, those scenes were deleted, according to screenwriter
Michael Wilson, "at the insistence of a high-echelon Fox executive who found it distasteful. Why? I suppose that, if one defines the mute Nova as merely 'humanoid' and not actually human, it would mean that Taylor had committed sodomy." Nova's pregnancy was thought to detract from the film's ending. In any case, all Harrison's scenes with Heston and Hunter in the sequence of Nova's pregnancy were cut. "There's probably a great deal of footage of it somewhere." ==Reception==