Director Rupert Wyatt Could Be Leaving ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’

Deadline reported today that it seems director Rupert Wyatt is walking away from the sequel to last summer’s widely successful Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Since Fox declined to comment on the matter, I would still take this as a rumor at this point, but one can’t help but think about how this will impact the sequel, especially since production should be getting underway very soon.The consensus seems to be similar to Gary Ross‘s  reasoning for dropping out of the Hunger Games sequel, in that the studio wants to crank out the film faster than the director thinks is needed to make a quality movie. Currently, the film is set for a May 23, 2014 release, which seems like enough time, but it’s clear that this is a fairly large-scale film.

This might not necessarily be a bad thing however, as Wyatt may now have the opportunity to work on his Agent 13 film with Charlize Theron.  For more info on that, check out our podcast where we interviewed the Agent 13 screenwriter, TS Nowlin.