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With 37 years now since the final installment of the original series, and the lackluster performance and lukewarm response of Tim Burton’s 2001 “re-imagining,” you might think that Twentieth Century Fox would have given up on attempting to reignite the Planet Of The Apes franchise.

You’d be wrong.

It had been reported that Oscar-nominated screenwriter Scott Frank (Minority Report, Out Of Sight) had long been working on re-tooling an existing script for a proposed series reboot, with plans to also direct. With recent reports that Frank had officially left the project citing creative differences, the new Apes looked to be on the fast-track to development death.

However, insiders are now claiming that Fox very quickly filled Frank’s void by enlisting writer Jamie Moss (Street Kings) to put the finishing touches on the script, and have even called in the screenplay’s original writers, Amanda Silver (The Hand That Rocks The Cradle) and Rick Jaffa (1997′s long-forgotten The Relic) to help.

Frank’s proposed plotline (referred to secretly as Caesar) served less as a remake of the original film, in which Charlton Heston’s astronaut crash lands on a violent planet inhabited by intelligent simians, and more as a reworking of the series’ fourth act, Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, in which the world’s first advanced ape, named Caesar, spreads his knowledge throughout the world’s primate population, and leads an eventual uprising.

Whereas the Caesar of the 1972 original was the son of a time-travelling ape couple from the franchise’s earlier films, the reboot presents Caesar as the product of intense psychological testing, resulting in his highly-evolved intellect.

No word yet on a possible director for the new Apes, but keep your eyes glued to Atomic Popcorn, as this project seems to be moving very quickly.