Planet of the Apes into limbo, creating their own story based on Boulle's novel and the original films. The game is an action-adventure in which players control astronaut Ulysses as he explores an ape-ruled future Earth. Fox Interactive's decision to co-publish with another company, Ubisoft, further delayed the game's release. Despite its long development, the game missed the debut of Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" film by two months; it finally appeared on September 20, 2001, to mostly negative reviews. Additionally, Ubisoft produced a substantially different "Planet of the Apes" game for Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color, a side-scroller following the
Escape from the Planet of the Apes the second. A new character of Dr. Milo is introduced played by actor Sal Mineo, who hoped his career would gain from the new project much as McDowall's career had from participating in the first film. Charlton Heston, star of the first film and supporting actor in the second, appears in this third installment only in two brief flashback sequences. Despite "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" ending in a way that seemed to prevent the series from continuing forward, 20th Century Fox still wanted a sequel. Roddy McDowell, in the franchise documentary "Behind the Planet of the Apes", stated