If you’re a King Kong fan, then you’ll be thinking that all of your Christmases have come at once, with Disney Plus becoming the latest to get in on the act of bringing the ruler of Skull Island to a brand new audience.
Paper Girls creator Stephany Folsom and James Wan’s Atomic Monster are teaming up to develop the first episodic project set exclusively in the Kong-verse, which is where things start to get confusing. As you’ll be aware, Legendary and Warner Bros. have already leaned upon the hulking simian as a key part of the multi-billion MonsterVerse.
On top of that, there’s also an animated show in the works at Netflix revolving around the skycraper-bothering brute, along with Apple’s own in-house series that’s set in the MonsterVerse with both generations of the Russell family set to star. Needless to say, the abundance of Kong-content has already been raising eyebrows.
In short, Disney Plus’ King Kong will operate independently of Netflix’s anime, and both of them will exist away from the established canon of the MonsterVerse, which was already a curious situation given that Warner Bros. are in charge of distributing the feature films, with Apple handling the short-form stories.
How much Kong is too much? Well, it appears as though we’ll be getting our answer in the not too distant future, but it’s a remarkable resurgence for the title hero, who first made a cinematic splash all the way back in 1933, but has since found himself enjoying a level of cultural relevance not seen since Peter Jackson’s remake went ice skating back in 2005.