Wes Ball Talks Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Spoilers

You’ve got questions and Wes Ball has answers. His new film, Related ContentRelated ProductsLego's New UCS TIE Interceptor Was Worth the 24 Year Wait CCShare SubtitlesOffEnglishRelated ContentRelated ProductsLego's New UCS TIE Interceptor Was Worth the 24 Year Wait CCShare SubtitlesOffEnglishFreya Allan as Mae.Image: FoxMae the humanOne of the first big reveals in the film is that Mae (played by Freya Allan) can speak. Advertisement“That’s kind of the dimension of the movie, I think,” he said. “She’s this little enigma that we get to unwrap over the course of the movie. And we knew we were going to start with an ape story this time. We’re going to start there. And, presumably, fans would remember that the virus basically wiped all humankind out and they lost their ability to speak. ‘Oh, there’s the feral humans that we all know,’ and they see in the trailers ‘Oh they’re all feral humans now. Cool.’ And of course, we meet a feral human and it’s like, perfect.”“Then we get to do the reverse, you know? But we were going to start with the idea that you thought this was a story about an ape named Noa, but by the end of it, we’re going to realize it’s actually a story about an ape named Noa and a human named Mae. It’s two stories. Two things. And literally a door opens at the end of the movie that shows that there is more to come. There is more behind this character and the relationship that they’ve had, the adventure they’ve had together. The things they’ve learned about each other, for better or worse, is going to be key moving forward. How they’re going to navigate their respective worlds. I think it’s just full of interesting possibilities.”AdvertisementWes Ball on set.Image: FoxThose other humansSo, does Ball know what the other humans are up to? Does it even matter since this is a story about apes?Advertisement“We’ve got ideas. We’ve certainly got ideas,” Ball said. “We talk about it while we’re making this thing. We very carefully talked about Noa and Mae as a character. I’m not saying it’s all written but we’ve got some good notions of where [the story] wants to go, and we’ve got a great light at the end of the tunnel, which is the 1968 original. We’ve got this thing that we’re kind of heading towards that kind of gives us some parameters, some loose guidelines where to go. We’ve got plenty of runway to go before that movie, but it’s exciting. The core of these movies is about apes and humans. That dynamic. They stand in for us as humans being able to exist with others that we are different than. That’s what it’s all about.”More to come?One of the reasons we didn’t like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes as much as, for example, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is this one ends promising a new movie. The ending isn’t really an ending as opposed to a pause. So, we asked Ball about that decision.Advertisement“It’s an important franchise for the studio,” Ball said. “It’d be naive to think it’s just one. I think we went into it trying to make sure it was a fulfilling one-story. But you’re right. There’s this little epilogue that is, you know—another door opens that hopefully promises a lot that you want to see more of, if we’re lucky enough to make more. That was the idea. It was just like the beginning of the next one, almost, more than the end of this one.”Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is now in theaters.Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest

Based on reporting by gizmodo.com.