When James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger almost remade ‘Planet of the Apes’
With two classic Terminator movies and the barnstorming True Lies as evidence, a great time is guaranteed to be had when James Cameron directs Arnold Schwarzenegger. They haven’t collaborated in that capacity since 1994, sadly, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
There were reports of Cameron considering Schwarzenegger for the role of Otto Octavius when he was contemplating the idea of directing Spider-Man, while they were also on track to remake Planet of the Apes in the late 1990s before the filmmaker decided that mounting a new version of a classic he’d adored since his teenage years was no longer something that interested him.
After kicking off with Charlton Heston’s iconic 1968 original, it wasn’t long before the franchise fell on hard times. Four sequels, a TV show, and an animated series were all part of canon by 1973, but the property had been gradually slipping into irrelevance ever since. Because everything that’s old is eventually new again in Hollywood, though, those damned dirty apes were coming back to the screen one way or another.
Schwarzenegger was on board as early as March 1994 as protagonist Will Robinson, with Terry Hayes writing a screenplay that found the geneticist time-travelling to a forgotten point in history where humanity was at war with the simians. Phillip Noyce signed on to direct before dropping out, Roland Emmerich declined the chance to replace him before Cameron entered the fray.
Reuniting the two driving forces of the Terminator franchise on a blockbuster sci-fi carrying a massive budget sounds like a licence to print money, but Cameron found himself butting heads with the studio over the direction of the story. “I had a great idea with Planet of the Apes, but it was Fox’s asset,” he told Ain’t It Cool. “Even though I was supposedly developing it we didn’t see eye to eye, and they sort of picked up their marbles and that was that.”
After focusing his attention on Titanic instead, Peter Jackson turned down the chance to take the reins with Schwarzenegger still on board and Cameron producing. The ‘Austrian Oak’ was next to vacate the project, Michael Bay became the latest director to knock it back, before the studio decided to start again from scratch. That led them directly to Tim Burton, who didn’t exactly knock it out of the park.
Ironically, given that he grew so frustrated with his own attempts failing to get it off the ground, few people were harsher on Burton’s eventual remake than Cameron. The Avatar creator blasted 2001’s Planet of the Apes as “the only Tim Burton film that I don’t like,” where he’d also describe it as “the most egregious film that they could have on that subject because they miscast the director.” If he felt so strongly, then maybe he should have toughed it out and made it himself.
Of course, the franchise is in the rudest health it’s ever been in thanks to the spectacular recent trilogy and incoming sequel Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, but that doesn’t make it any less tantalising to imagine what Cameron and Schwarzenegger could have brought to the table.
