The Planet of the Apes franchise is one of the oldest science fiction franchises in Hollywood. The first film premiered in 1968 and became a cultural phenomenon. The film became so popular it spawned four sequel films, a live action television series, an animated Saturday morning cartoon and plenty of merchandise. The series was so iconic it was rebooted twice to try and revive its 1970s popularity with the 2001 remake directed by Tim Burton and the reboot trilogy from 2011 – 2017.

With Disney airing 20th Century Fox in 2019 the Planet of the Apes franchise became part of the Disney Empire. Since then Disney has had the entire film series released on their Disney+ streaming service, and with the supposed third reboot that is currently in development you can be sure Disney will do whatever they can to try and revitalize the IP.

So what’s the big story? Why are we talking about this seemingly dormant franchise? Well as of a few days ago almost the entire classic series of Planet of the Apes has been released on YouTube’s Free with Ads movie section. Though it only includes four of the five classic film series.



This section allows you to watch films in their entirety but you will be forced to watch unstoppable ads.

The films included are Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). For some reason the fourth film, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) is still locked behind the buy/rent category, along with the 2001 remake and the reboot trilogy. 

This is rather unusual to see since Disney of course tries to milk as much money as possible out of any film they own. Yet these four films are now viewable for FREE, with ads of course. Perhaps in the future we may see more Disney owned films on YouTube’s free with ads category? Probably not. But it would be nice.