Return of the Apes

Return of the APes - Terry Hayes - unproduced RETURN OF THE APES by Terry Hayes first draft 1996 DEEP SPACE. No atmosphere, no life, nothing. Just a web of lights- a billion stars hang in a velvet void. The only sound is the howl of the cosmic wind. The light of a distant sun strikes a rising planet. We see ragged continents and oceans wreathed in cloud. This is earth rise. Our world spins slowly in space, a thing of beauty, of awesome majesty. In all this nothingness - life. We push in on the planet - in to the Americas. The wind grows louder - A PUEBLO VILLAGE. A broken-down pick-up bumps into a God-forsaken villagea cluster of adobe houses, blinding flurries of dust and sand. The pick-up stops in front of a crumbling church. A man in his 60s gets out carrying a medical bag. This is the DOCTOR. ' A WOMAN'S FACE. Screaming. She's very young - a South American Indian - lying on a bed in a corner of one of the houses. She is in the final throes of childbirth, a sheet draped over her loins. The Doctor works between her legs, encouraging her in Spanish. The local PRIEST, not long out of the seminary, crouches at her side counting off the beads of a rosary. He looks like he is about to pass out. SUDDENLY THE WOMAN BITES DOWN HARD ON HER LIP. A THIN LINE OF BLOOD COURSES DOWN HER CHIN. THE BREATH EXPLODES FROM HER LUNGS AS SHE PUSHES REALLY HARD - DOCTOR Arriva! He lifts the child from her loins, but it makes no sound. We don't see the baby - just the shock on the Doctor's face.