The Big Picture

• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes exceeds box office expectations, already surpassing major milestones in just 10 days.
• Directed by Wes Ball, this fourth installment in the series has grossed $237 million globally.
• The film is set to start a new trilogy, featuring a storyline following a young ape's rebellion against a villainous dictator.

After exceeding expectations in its first weekend of release, 20th Century Studios’ Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes reported soft drops in its sophomore frame, both domestically and overseas. And in just 10 days of release, the big-budget science-fiction spectacle has already started passing major box office milestones. Directed by Wes Ball, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the fourth installment in the Planet of the Apes reboot series, which began in 2011 with Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

That film concluded its global run with $470 million, setting the stage for Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to take the series to new heights just three years later in 2014. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes added $25 million domestically this weekend, taking its running domestic haul past the coveted $100 million mark. It also grossed $40 million from overseas markets, pushing its international haul to $136 million. The film’s cumulative global haul now stands at $237 million in just 10 days, which means that it has already recovered its reported budget of $160 million.

The 'Planet of the Apes' Reboot Series Has Grossed Nearly $2 Billion Worldwide

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes debuted with $58 million domestically, outperforming both Rise and the reboot series’ third installment, War for the Planet of the Apes, which concluded its global run with $490 million in 2017. The series’ highest-grossing entry remains Dawn, which generated over $700 million globally over the course of its run. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set several centuries after the events of the first three films, which told the origin story of the ape Caesar, the first primate to develop super-intelligence and inadvertently initiate the destruction of humanity.

In Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Caesar has been appropriated as a messianic figure by a villainous dictator named Proximus, who aims to hasten the apes’ evolution by arming them with guns. The movie follows a young ape named Noa, who stages a rebellion against Proximus to save his tribe. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes opened to strong reviews and seems to have settled at a “fresh” 81% approval rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. In his review, Collider’s Ross Bonaime wrote that the movie “exists in a strange middle ground that is reverential to the past, while attempting to create its own future in the series.”

The film is expected to start a new trilogy, and also features Freya Allan and William H. Macy, alongside motion-capture performers Peter Macon and Kevin Durand. You can watch Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

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