20th Century Fox is moving forward with their next movie in the Planet of the Apes franchise, and this time around the movie will be a prequel of sorts, telling an origin story of a race of evolved humanoid apes who rise up to fight for control of the planet.

The new film, titled Rise of the Apes, is described as being set in San Francisco where “man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.” It will be directed by Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist), with Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (The Hand That Rocked the Cradle, The Relic) touching up the script originally penned by Scott Frank and re-penned by Jamie Moss.

Another bit of information regarding this project — one that won’t have fans very thrilled — is that Weta Digital will apparently be crafting CGI apes for use in the film, instead of going with the traditional live-action, sit-in-a-chair-for-6-hours of makeup jobs that have been done in previous films.

This will all likely boil down to budget. On one side, Weta Digital has done work on movies like The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, District 9, and Avatar. On the other side, they’ve done movies like Eragon, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Jumper, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. So will Fox drop the cash, or will they settle for the mediocre? And even if they pay for top-notch animations or even motion-captured CGI, will it make a difference considering what people are used to with Planet of the Apes? Even in Tim Burton’s movie, which most people loathed, the apes actually looked pretty awesome…to me, anyway.

At the moment, the planned release date for Rise of the Apes is June 24th 2011.

What do you think about Fox’s new plans for their Planet of the Apes prequel?

[Sources: Collider, THR]