The apes are going from coast to coast!
On April 26, apes on horseback were seen traversing through Liberty State Park in New Jersey with the lower Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty in view.
This comes days after ape characters from the upcoming movie Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes surprised onlookers in Venice, California. It’s all part of a viral stunt marketing campaign to promote the sequel.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the first film in the long-running Planet of the Apes franchise since 2017 and furthers the storyline that began with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The new movie picks up hundreds of years after the 2010s trilogy, which depicted the rise of an intelligent species of apes that rival the human species on Earth. By the time the new movie starts, apes have cemented their status as the planet’s dominant species.
Experiential Supply
The new movie stars Owen Teague as a chimpanzee named Noa, who begins to realize that he does not fully understand the relationship between apes and humans as he befriends a human (Freya Allan) and puts himself at odds with a rising ape leader.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
“As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike,” reads an official synopsis for the film.
Experiential Supply
The next Planet of the Apes movie is the 10th overall entry in the decades-old which dates back to 1968’s original Planet of the Apes. That first movie was based on Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel of the same name. The most recent three films in the series starred Andy Serkis as a genetically enhanced chimpanzee named Caesar who comes to lead a species-wide uprising against humans, bringing about the destruction of modern life on Earth.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes releases in theaters May 10.