And I think it’s a great idea and a shame that Hollywood continues to pay for an idea that they can never be bothered to use. The apes are SUPPOSED to be exactly like us, that’s the whole point of the novel.
Hitting somebody adapting a novel into a movie for not being original is kind of silly. The job handed to him was not to be original, it was to adapt a work to a different media. Which he did, well. With some tweaking and good directing it could have been a good movie, very different from the POTA series we got. The biggest difference really would have been the commentary. The Boulle novel’s commentary is about hubris and man’s assumption that we’re the top of the evolutionary ladder, while the movies have all been commenting on racism and white man’s assumption to being on top. Maybe Boulle’s message doesn’t connect well enough to get 9 movies and 2 TV shows but it’s still a good story.
It’s a great story and a good short novel. I don’t think it’s cinematic, though, and Serling didn’t help at all. Luckily we got a far superior vision.