Brian Cox Joins The Cast Of Rise Of The Apes

Twentieth Century Fox (via its Twitter account) has officially announced that Brian Cox has joined the cast of Rise of the Apes, the Planet of the Apes prequel set to come out next year. Cox joins a cast that includes James Franco, John Lithgow, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto.

It's generally hard to get behind a project like this (who the hell needs a prequel to Planet of the Apes?) but one must admire the cast that the studio is going all out with the casting. Brian Cox is certainly not new to blockbuster or mainstream films, but he has almost exclusively been working on the independent side the last few years. The "press release" doesn't give much in the way of information - a 140-character limit kind of prevents that - but here's hoping that he gets the prosthetic treatment and fights on the side of the monkey-men. I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't want to see that.