The Planet of the Apes film franchise is one of the oldest and most extensive in Hollywoods history. The first movie of the series, simply titled Planet of the Apes, was released in 1968, and it starred Charlton Heston as an astronaut who crash lands on a planet populated by intelligent apes. Hestons character, George Taylor, sees the good and bad sides of an ape civilization that rules over humans who have lost their intelligence and ability to speak. The film was loosely based on a French novel of the same name, written by Pierre Boulle, which had been published five years prior, in 1963.