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It’s been almost two months since we brought you news on a long-in-development reboot of Planet of the Apes. At that time, the project had just lost its long-suspected director/screenwriter Scott Frank, and Fox was moving ahead with writer Jamie Moss being brought in to rework the script. Now Deadline is reporting the the remake/prequel project may have found a director in young indie upstart Rupert Wyatt.

Wyatt only has one full-length feature under his belt so far, the 2008 prison drama The Escapist, and later this year he’ll be releasing Birdsong, another low-key British drama. Seems an auspicious start for the expected director of a big-budget, blockbuster franchise, but it could be a blessing. Wyatt’s experience seems to fall into the “deep character study” genre, which would be perfect for the proposed screenplay, which finds a geneticist working with simian test subjects to find a cure for Alzheimers. One of those subjects, an ape named Caesar, gradually develops highly-evolved qualities such as speech and upright movement and eventually leads a worldwide ape uprising. The script has been given the apt, if uninspired title Caesar: Rise of the Apes.

Chud also lists a few cool easter eggs and nods to the earlier series that are present in the script including an opening scene that mirrors the classic human-capturing scene from the original, as well as references made to Charlton Heston’s character Colonel Taylor and the crew of the Icarus.

Apes fans sound off! What do you think of this new prequel/reboot/remake/something?