A look inside Hollywood and the movies : BACK TO ‘PLANET OF THE APES’ : Now, If Oliver Stone Can Find Roddy McDowall’s Killer . . .

It may not be a “ ‘Jurassic Park’ for 1995,” as one producer predicted, but a planned big-budget “reinvention” of “Planet of the Apes” is in the works at 20th Century Fox. And Oliver Stone, Hollywood’s ultimate social realist-turned-fantasist, is expected to take the helm.

Various off-the-record sources confirmed last week that a deal was near for Stone to develop and, if all goes well, produce “Apes.” The script, to be written by Australian screenwriter Terry Hayes (“The Road Warrior,” “Dead Calm”), won’t be based on the Pierre Boulle novel, an insider says, nor will it be a remake of Fox’s 1968 Charlton Heston sci-fi classic.

“It’s a total reinvention of the whole thing,” a studio executive relates, adding that the film is projected to cost in the vicinity of $60 million. “The story that’s been mapped out is almost the complete opposite, timewise, of what the first movie was. There are no astronauts crash-landing.” It will be set in the distant past, he said, focusing on a race of alien apes who are Earth’s dominant species. They spawn the human race and program its fate so that a critical point in the 21st Century holds the key to man’s fate.

Neither Stone, the director-writer behind “JFK,” “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Platoon,” nor Hayes returned calls. Stone’s latest project is “Natural-Born Killers,” a violent melodrama based on a Quentin Tarantino script that’s now being edited. His “Heaven and Earth” is to be released by Warner Bros. in December.

Fox production executive Chris Meladandri, whom the studio has assigned to the project, also didn’t return calls.

Don Murphy, who produced “Natural-Born Killers” with Jane Hamsher and is in line with her to produce “Apes,” said earlier this week that the deal isn’t locked and refused to elaborate.

But one source, speaking earlier this week, said that the deal is “a few days away from being finalized . . . Fox is not going to walk away from Oliver Stone.”

Tom Jacobson, Fox’s president of worldwide production, declined to name any participants in the “Apes” project. Jacobson admitted, though, that the studio “planted its flag”--declared its intention--regarding the project “a few weeks ago” and has attracted “some very big, very serious, people.”

The original movie, which Franklin J. Schaffner directed from a Rod Serling script, was followed by four sequels (“Beneath . . . “ “Escape From . . . “ “Conquest of . . . “ and “Battle for . . . “). All five played off Serling’s basic premise, a far-away future in which apes have taken over the Earth from humans. In the Boulle novel, the civilized apes live on another planet.

In addition to continuing syndication and home video revenues, the ‘60s-’70s “Apes” movies yielded a short-lived TV series and an animated series. Fox’s ultimate goal would be to build a similar new franchise.

A ‘90s “Apes” franchise would seem especially attractive, industry-watchers have noted, given that Fox’s other action-movie repeaters--”Die Hard” “Alien” and “Predator”--have run into snags. Only “The Beverly Hillbillies” seems a potential Fox franchise.

Fox and agency sources report that the studio recently tried to launch “Alien vs. Predator,” inspired by a comic-book series of the same name, but gave up because the producing rights for “Alien” and “Predator”--which involved a rogue’s gallery of disparate, high-powered producers including Larry Gordon, Jon Davis, Walter Hill, Joel Silver and David Giler--couldn’t be agreed upon.