What I thought was so great about Rise [of the Planet of the Apes ] was that it wasn't a retelling; it was an entering of the universe at a different point. So it's Planet of the Apes. We already know the ending. There's no mystery in that! It becomes Planet of the Apes. So it's not about what is at the end; it's about how did we get there? And that enabled something that was totally fresh, which was an ape-point-of-view movie.

That movie [War for the Planet of the Apes] is incredibly engaging; it's what drives the emotion of all these films. So tonight, we're going to show a long sequence that's actually going to be.

My main interest in being a director, and the most important thing to me, is that world with the actors.

When you think of the "Exorcist" (1973) you think of Linda Blair and pea soup and all this madness, but really if you look at the first half of that film, the stuff between her and Ellen Burstyn is so naturalistic and so real.

I think the fun thing about this franchise [Planet of Apes], as storytellers, is that a lot of the franchises are very black and white. This is all about the gray areas; it's really about the nature.

What I thought was so great about Rise [of the Planet of the Apes ] was that it wasn't a retelling; it was an entering of the universe at a different point. So it's Planet of the Apes. We already know the ending. There's no mystery in that! It becomes Planet of the Apes. So it's not about what is at the end; it's about how did we get there? And that enabled something that was totally fresh, which was an ape-point-of-view movie.

That was one of the key things - when you asked the story about the writing of the story - one of the things we wanted to make sure was that it grew out of.