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The only film in the original series of five that does not star Roddy McDowall, who was committed to another project. Archive footage of McDowall as Cornelius is played at the start, and David Watson plays the character in the film proper. Despite this, McDowall is often pictured on video and DVD packaging for this film.
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Orson Welles was offered the role of General Ursus, which he turned down. Burt Reynolds was considered for the lead role of John Brent before James Franciscus was cast due to his resemblance to Charlton Heston. Don Medford agreed to direct the movie, but walked out after the budget was halved.
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An early draft of the script, called "Planet of the Men", and written by Pierre Boulle in his native French, featured a messianic Taylor 14 years after the events of Planet of the Apes. It involved an uprising against the apes, following which they revert back to their primal states.
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Due to the smaller budget of this film, many of the extras cast as apes wore masks instead of the famous ape make up.
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This was the first appearance of Natalie Trundy in the "Apes" series. She is the only person to play both a human and an ape in the series.
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Originally, there was going to be a scene featuring a half-human/half-ape child. However, the producers were afraid that not only would the scene be too confusing, but that they would also lose their "G" rating.
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20th-Fox Producer Irwin Allen used the tiled tubular set of subterranean New York for an episode of Land of the Giants, and as an electrical power-duct in his TV-movie City Beneath the Sea. In both cases, panels of red lights were inset into the tiled tube making it more useful in these later projects. The same set would be used in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes as corridors between sections of the Ape Management complex (utilizing white lights).
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Several sources (including the official novelization, comic adaptation, and music CD soundtrack), reveal Brent's first name as 'John'. His dying fellow astronaut, called only Skipper, wears a nametag which, when magnified in freeze frame, appears to be Maddon or Maddox. Don Pedro Colley's character is named "Ono Goro" in the script--Colley was bemused to discover that he was credited as "Negro" in the end titles.
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The second of five Planet of the Apes movies starring Charlton Heston, Maurice Evans, Kim Hunter and Linda Harrison.
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The 'official' budget is $3 million. However, director Ted Post stated the budget was $2.5 million. Another historian claims it was $4.7 million. All these discrepancies can be found in the Bluray 40 Yr Box Set; under special feature documentaries for POTA; Beneath; and Battle.
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Spoilers
An alternate ending was written where Taylor, Brent and Nova escape the underground city prior to the detonation of the bomb, which was not a doomsday device as it is in the finished film. They return to Ape City and, along with Zira and Cornelius, release the humans from the cages and a new order is begun. The script ends hundreds of years later with the Lawgiver teaching a group of ape and human children, who sit in harmony together. The final shot of the script shows a mutated gorilla emerging from the underground and fatally shooting a flying dove. (The "Lawgiver Scene" was resurrected as the framing structure for Battle for the Planet of the Apes.)
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Charlton Heston was reluctant to reprise the role of George Taylor for this movie. He eventually agreed on condition that his scenes had to be shot within a two week period. He also insisted that Taylor had to be killed. He agreed to a compromise in which he'd disappear in the beginning of the film and reappear to die at the end. Heston claims in the documentary Behind the Planet of the Apes that he personally suggested the ending, saying, "Why don't I just set off this bomb and destroy the world. That's the end of the sequels."
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