War for the Planet of the Apes

• Andy Serkis as Caesar, a chimpanzee who is leader to a tribe of enhanced apes.[12]
• Steve Zahn as Bad Ape, a chimpanzee who manages to flee from the Sierra Safari Zoo after seeing his family and acquaintances being blamed for the simian flu and killed by the soldiers.[13][14]
• Toby Kebbell as Koba, a treacherous bonobo who hates humans and is responsible for the war. Koba appears to Caesar as a hallucination.
• Judy Greer as Cornelia, Caesar's chimpanzee wife.[12]
• Karin Konoval as Maurice, a Bornean orangutan and Caesar's loyal adviser and friend.[12]
• Terry Notary as Rocket, Caesar's loyal chimpanzee lieutenant.[15]
• Michael Adamthwaite as Luca, a western lowland gorilla and chief commander of the guards in Caesar's tribe.
• Ty Olsson as Red, a western lowland gorilla who works for the Colonel as a "donkey".
• Devyn Dalton as Cornelius, Caesar's youngest chimpanzee son.
• Sara Canning as Lake, Blue Eyes' chimpanzee wife. She takes care of Cornelius.[16]
• Aleks Paunovic as Winter, an albino western lowland gorilla in Caesar's tribe, who later joins forces with the Colonel.[17]
• Max Lloyd-Jones as Blue Eyes, Caesar's eldest chimpanzee son.

• Woody Harrelson as the Colonel, the leader of the paramilitary faction the Alpha-Omega.[18][19] The militia employs around 400 militarized people, who remain confident as humanity's last bastion under the leadership of the Colonel
• Gabriel Chavarria as Preacher, a crossbowman commander in the Alpha-Omega militia and the Colonel's right hand[20]
• Amiah Miller as Nova, an orphan who is mute[21][22]
• Roger Cross as the Captain from the Alpha-Omega platoon
• Mercedes De La Zerda as Lang, a soldier whose life is spared after the platoon assault failed and the survivors were captured. Later, she participates in the infiltration team at that night
• Chad Rook as Boyle, a soldier from the quarantine facility who sees the construction of the defensive wall

Matt Reeves, Andy Serkis and Dylan Clark at New York Comic Con 2016 for the War for the Planet of the Apes panel

After seeing his cut of Dawn, 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment signed Matt Reeves to return as director for a third installment of the reboot series. In January 2014, the studio announced the third film, with Reeves returning to direct and co-write along with Bomback, and Peter Chernin, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver serving as producers.[23][24] During an interview in mid-November 2014 with MTV, Andy Serkis said they did not know the next film's setting. "...It could be five years after the event. It could be the night after the events of where we left Dawn."[25] In May 2015, the title was first given as War of the Planet of the Apes.[26] By October 2015, it had been retitled as War for the Planet of the Apes.[13] When director Reeves and screenwriter Bomback came on board to helm Dawn, the film already had a release date, which led to an accelerated production schedule. However, with the third installment, Fox wanted to give the duo plenty of time to write and make the film. Taking advantage of this, the two bonded with each other more than before.[27]

In interviews for Dawn, Reeves talked about the inevitable war Caesar would have with the humans: "As this story continues, we know that war is not avoided by the end of Dawn. That is going to take us into the world of what he is grappling with. Where he is going to be thrust into circumstances that he never, ever wanted to deal with, and was hoping he could avoid. And now he is right in the middle of it. The things that happen in that story test him in huge ways, in the ways in which his relationship with Koba haunts him deeply. It's going to be an epic story. I think you've probably read that I sort of described it where in the first film was very much about his rise from humble beginnings to being a revolutionary. The second movie was about having to rise to the challenge of being a great leader in the most difficult of times. This is going to be the story that is going to cement his status as a seminal figure in ape history, and sort of leads to an almost biblical status. He is going to become like a mythic ape figure, like Moses."[28]

Toby Kebbell, who portrayed Koba in Dawn, had expressed interest in reprising his role or performing as other characters.[29] Plans to include Koba in a larger role in the film were abandoned early, with Bomback saying, "If you stayed until the very end of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, you hear Koba's breathing. We did that to give us a tiny crack of a possibility that we could revive Koba if we wanted to. Very early on in spitballing, we realized there was nothing more to do with Koba—certainly nothing that would exceed what he had done in the last story. But we knew we wanted to keep him alive as an idea. In playing out the reality of what happened at the end of the last film, Caesar would be traumatized by having to kill his brother. That would have resonance, and we wanted to make sure that did not get lost. So the answer was that we could go inside Caesar's mind at this point and revisit Koba that way."[30]

In August 2015, Deadline reported that Gabriel Chavarria had been cast as one of the humans in the film.[31] In September 2015, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Woody Harrelson had been cast as the film's antagonist, and that Chavarria's role was supporting.[18] In October 2015, TheWrap reported that Steve Zahn was cast as a new ape in the film.[13] It was also announced that actress Amiah Miller was cast as one of the film's humans, with Judy Greer and Karin Konoval reprising their roles as Cornelia and Maurice,[12][21] while Aleks Paunovic and Sara Canning were cast as new apes.[17][16]

Principal photography on the film began on October 14, 2015, in the Lower Mainland in Vancouver, under the working title Hidden Fortress.[32][33] Filming was expected to take place there until early March 2016.[34] Parts of the film were expected to shoot for up to five days in the Kananaskis in late January and early February.[35] In March, Serkis confirmed that he had finished shooting his portions.[36]

As with Rise and Dawn, the visual effects for War were created by Weta Digital; the apes were created with a mixture of motion-capture and CGI key-frame animation, as they were performed in motion-capture technology and animated in CGI.[37][38][39][40]

Special behind-the-scenes footage for the film was aired on TV on November 22, 2015, as part of a contest announcement presented by director Matt Reeves and Andy Serkis.[52] The footage aired during The Walking Dead on AMC.[53][54] The announcement allowed winners to wear a performance-capture suit and appear in a scene as an ape.[55] The announcement was released on 20th Century Fox's official YouTube page later the same day.[56]

At a New York Comic Con special event on October 6, 2016, Reeves, Serkis and producer Dylan Clark debuted an exclusive look at the film.[57]

Serkis has also mentioned that the film would be accompanied by a video game, for which he performed motion capture.[58] Titled Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier, the game was released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC in fall 2017.[59]

War for the Planet of the Apes grossed $146.9 million in the United States and Canada and $343.8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $490.7 million, against a production budget of $150–152 million.[3][4]

In North America, the film was projected to gross $50–60 million in its opening weekend;[60][61] however, given its acclaimed status and strong word-of-mouth, rival studios believed the film had the potential to debut as high as $70–80 million.[60][62][63] War was closely monitored by analysts while the summer was witnessing a decline in ticket sales, a situation that they blamed on franchise fatigue for an overabundance of sequels and reboots (such as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Transformers: The Last Knight and The Mummy). However, box office analysts noted that well-reviewed films have tended to perform in-line with estimates (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man: Homecoming).[64][65][66] The film grossed $5 million from Thursday night previews at 3,021 theaters, up 22% from the $4.1 million earned by its predecessor, and $22.1 million on its first day. It went on to debut to $56.3 million, topping the box office, albeit with a 22% drop from Dawn's $72.6 million debut.[67][68] In its second weekend, the film grossed $20.9 million (a drop of 62.9%, more than the 50.1% fall Dawn saw), finishing 4th at the box office.[69] In its third weekend, the film made $10.5 million (dropping another 49.9%), finishing 6th at the box office. It was lower than the third weeks of both Rise ($16.1 million) and Dawn ($16.8 million).[70]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 94% approval rating based on 363 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "War for the Planet of the Apes combines breathtaking special effects and a powerful, poignant narrative to conclude this rebooted trilogy on a powerful—and truly blockbuster—note."[71] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 82 out of 100 based on 50 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[72] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[73]

War for the Planet of the Apes received praise for the cast's performances (particularly Serkis'), Reeves' direction, visual effects, musical score, cinematography and its morally complex storyline.[74] Scott Collura of IGN awarded the film a score of 9.5 out of 10, saying: "War for the Planet of the Apes is an excellent closing act to this rebooted trilogy, but also one that does enough world-building that the series can potentially continue from here—and it's a rare case where, after three movies, we're left wanting more."[75] A. O. Scott of The New York Times said of the film, "War for the Planet of the Apes, directed by Matt Reeves, is the grimmest episode so far, and also the strongest, a superb example—rare in this era of sloppily constructed, commercially hedged cinematic universes—of clear thinking wedded to inventive technique in popular filmmaking," and lauded Andy Serkis's performance in the film, stating that "Andy Serkis's performance as Caesar is one of the marvels of modern screen acting."[76]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three and a half out of four stars, and said that Serkis performed "with a resonant power and depth of feeling that's nearly Shakespearean. Oscar, get busy: Serkis deserves the gold," and went on to say that "War for the Planet of the Apes—No. 9 in the simian cinema canon—is the best of the Apes films since the 1968 original."[77]

Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave the film a B+ rating, and praised Matt Reeves's directing, saying "It's a given that an expensive 21st-century sci-fi movie with talking animals, exploding tanks, and jarring machine guns would look and sound great, but Reeves applies these effects with such a measured strategy that they're always working in service of a greater narrative agenda." Kohn went on to applaud the visuals and musical score, stating that "The breathlessly paced montage of flying bullets and angry monkeys raining down on terrified men, aided by Michael Giacchino's vibrant score, is a strong indicator of the next-level craftsmanship that distinguishes these movies from so many cacophonous Hollywood spectacles; not only is the action easy to follow, but you care for the motion-captured characters at the center of it, while the humans cower in fear."[78]

War for the Planet of the Apes was released on Digital HD on October 10, 2017, and on Blu-ray and DVD on October 24, 2017, by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.[79]