Rise of the Planet of the Apes surprised many by just how good it was and became a significant hit, grossing $481 million globally on a modest $93 million budget. Unsurprisingly 20th Century Fox immediately wanted a sequel, with Rupert Wyatt, who helmed the first movie, putting it together, which now has the working title Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
However now Deadline says that Wyatt may be leaving the sequel behind. As with Gary Ross leaving The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, it seems the director is bowing out because he is uncomfortable with the timeline that the studio has given him to get the movie made. Fox has been aiming to release the film on May 23, 2014, but it seems Wyatt doesn’t believe that he will have enough time between now and then to make a quality product (although interestingly, that’s still gives the movie more time than the first film head, which was made on a pretty tight schedule).
However, with a bigger bugdet, more spectacle and greater special effects, it’s not a vast amount of time (especially as we don’t know when Fox want to actually shoot it) so it’s easy to see how a rushed schedule could potentially harm the final product.