by: S. Scott Stanikmas – Senior Staff Writer

Production on War for the Planet of the Apes is ramping up, and director Matt Reeves is in a giving mood. Recently on his Twitter account, Reeves decided to show us the first official image and it pays homage in a way to the original 1968 classic.

Fans of the original Planet of the Apes remember the iconic final scene on the beach where Charlton Heston finds the Statue of Liberty’s upper-half embedded in the sand and utters one of cinema’s greatest lines. Could this ape on horseback riding on the beach be a clue that we’re now getting to the point in the timeline where Planet of the Apes would begin?

Reeves has already said in interviews that he’s not interested in doing a straight up remake of the original, but it would be fun to get to that point and do an updated version, with the previous films being a good jumping off point for another vision of the film:

The idea would never be to remake the ’68 film. There might be some of those events from another perspective, and obviously to also see them as events that grew out of everything that we’ve been watching from this new iteration. They wouldn’t be exactly the same either. So if, and when, we ever get there, which I think is an exciting notion, it would definitely not be a remake but it would be sort of a re-telling of those events from a new perspective. And the events themselves would probably be a bit different since they will have grown out of these films.

The newest film has Woody Harrelson as the villainous Colonel and Gabriel Chavarria in a role likened to James Franco’s in the first film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. On the simian side Andy Serkis thankfully returns once again to portray Caesar, the top banana that got the ball rolling. Steve Zahn has also signed-on to don a mo-cap suit and get more in touch with his monkey side.

War for the Planet of the Apes is set to swing into theaters July 14, 2017.