One of the things I thought coming into the franchise, what I thought was a unique gift: you hear so much of these reboots, remakes, re-whatevers, and the thing about them is that a lot of them are retellings.

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.

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.

There's something about seeing a movie that you like, and being able to see the scenes that didn't make it, just as a window into the process of how choices are made and how a movie is made. To me, the idea of getting to have the scenes on the DVD is very exciting.

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.

I never would have guessed I would be making science fiction and horror films.