Collider states that they have exclusively learned the title of the third entry into the new Planet of the Apes films, which is aptly titled War of the Planet of the Apes. Considering the ending of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, it makes perfect sense that this would be the title and the path they embark upon.
Director Matt Reeves told Collider previously:
We actually did have an ending [to ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ that went one step further, and I realized late in the game, ‘Wait a minute. I don’t want us to be boxed in in this way. I think we should be left with a more open—knowing that we were going to figure out what the next story is—I didn’t want to in a way narrow our options.’ I wanted to open them up.
What was really most important was to leave you in that emotional space with Caesar, which is the ending of the movie that you’ve seen, and know that the future is coming, but not already be at that future. Because the moment is really about the moment that’s past. It could have been the planet of the humans and the apes, and that parting between Caesar and Malcolm is a very emotional moment to me, and I didn’t want something that distracted and became something else.
So yeah, there actually was another version of the movie, and that version never even got fully realized. We cut it late, but the effects for it weren’t realized for it either.
War of the Planet of the Apes comes out July 14th, 2017.