Guess Who Was Supposed to Croak in Rise of the Apes?

No, not the franchise since Rupert Wyatt shocked everyone and directed a quality prequel (Very few can make that claim!) to the Planet of the Apes series and not the general public since they made Rise of the Apes into the surprise hit of this past summer.

Via THR, Ted Gagliano, big-cheese of post-production at 20^th Century Fox, relayed a story during a panel this weekend about a last-minute decision on Apes that caused a frantic scrambling to get new shots rendered in lieu of its August 5^th release – remember it got moved to Thanksgiving 2011 for awhile there. James Franco's character of Will Rodman originally took a dirt nap at the end. Funny they admit that because a lot of us got the impression he wasn't going to make it in those trailers and it was a real surprise to see him still rocking a pulse when the credits rolled.

If you're curious to know how the scene played out and don't want to wait for the DVD/Blu-Ray (which Gagliano confesses will be there and speaks frankly on the subject of how deleted footage is a big selling point for the home market), The Playlist has the script-pages. I won't cut-and-paste them here but needless to say you can see how this would trigger Caesar (Andy Serkis) into screaming, "Fuck all humans!" and wiping out the race.

Where it stands now, it's not a given Franco will return for the inevitable Rise of the Apes sequel. Certainly, it'd be a nice payday for the actor since his days of being Tobey Maguire's onscreen BFF are long over. Were he included, I feel like his only purpose would, in fact, be to die...and they already passed that up the first time.