As soon as Weta were involved, it was only a matter of time before Andy Serkis was confirmed to play rebellious chimp Caesar. Playing the first ape to demonstrate sentience and the figurehead of the subsequent simian uprising, it was a role that would demand a lot from Serkis both physically and emotionally.

“I get to play Caesar from an infant through to a revolutionary leader, so that in itself is an incredible challenge,” Serkis told us earlier this year. “It’s a very personal story with global implications.”

On top of the personal challenge, the film also represented a new working environment for this most seasoned of performance-capture professionals. “Basically this film represents one of the first and biggest examples of having multiple [performance capture] actors on a live-action set,” he explained. “Having this amount of live performances is pretty new. The Golden Gate sequence must be a world record in terms of the size of the capture area.”

Not that Serkis was remotely fazed by engaging with the technology once more. “A motion-capture costume is actually a very liberating costume,” said the actor at a recent conference held to discuss the film. “The alternative is to wear a suit with fur and have layers of prosthetics on your face, like the actors did in the original Apes movies. For me, I find that much more restrictive… performance-capture allows you to just play intention without being encumbered in any way.”