Rise of the Apes will be an origin story about a scientist in modern-day San Francisco (played by James Franco) working on a cure for Alzheimer's by testing on Apes. When his subject, named Caesar after the chimp that began the original uprising against the humans in 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, begins exhibiting signs of sentience, he takes him home to keep him safe.

His experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.

The film will also star John Lithgow as Franco's Alzheimer's-stricken father, with Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto as a fellow primatologist. There have also been reports that Don Cheadle may have a part to play.

Source: Press Release