Do you often get irritated because, even though you could literally drown in all the different versions of Planet Of The Apes that have been made over the years, nobody’s ever bothered to tell you what happened on the planet almost 2,000 years before the events of the original movie?

If you do, we have two pieces of advice for you – 1) hold onto your hat, because Fox is apparently very close to starting production on that exact Planet Of The Apes prequel, entitled Genesis: Apes, set 1,969 years before the original movie, and 2) stop wasting your life, you friendless nincompoop.

Aside from inexplicably continuing to give Vin Diesel work, Hollywood loves nothing more than overloading a hot trend until its wheels fall off. And the hottest trend of the moment would appear to be the utterly needless prequel.

Looking at the production schedules, we can see that there’s a Wolverine prequel coming out soon, plus a Star Trek prequel, the prequel to Lord Of The Rings and a Terminator movie that’s a sort of prequel but not really. But that’s nothing, because there’s a Planet Of The Apes prequel coming out, and if you judge a prequel’s quality on the space of time between the setting of the prequel and the original, then it’s going to be the best prequel ever made.

The original Planet Of The Apes was set in the year 3978, but if you want to trace back to the exact moment which set off the chain of events that ended up with Charlton Heston wailing around on his knees like a sandy bellend, you need to go back 1,969 years to – oh, this is a coincidence – 2009.

That’s apparently the plot of new Planet Of The Apes prequel Genesis: Apes. And to prove we’re not making any of this up, here’s a quote about it from Fox’s Tom Rothman, as found on CHUD:

We are very close at Fox on a new Apes script- this one a kind of prequel story before the first story, with a return to the social thematics that mark the first one, but with an entirely contemporary setting – Earth 2009.

So, just to make this clear, the new Planet Of The Apes sequel won’t be set on the ape planet as we know it, nor will it feature very many clever monkeys. Maybe there’ll be a chimpanzee with a metal colander on its head who can talk through a machine, but apart from that there’ll be a bunch of grumpy humans listening to Katy Perry and not much else.

Who knows why Planet Of The Apes is getting this prequel. Maybe it’s because strong sales of Planet Of The Apes DVDs proves that demand for the new movie is there. Or maybe someone at Fox is friends with Tim Burton and deliberately wants to make a Planet Of The Apes movie that’ll make Tim’s 2001 remake look less crap in comparison. Or maybe people just think they’ll get rich if they cynically knock out a massively unnecessary Planet Of The Apes prequel without putting much thought in.

Let’s hope the last one isn’t the case, because if Genesis: Apes is successful then we’re going to be overloaded with prequels set thousands of years before the original. And a trend that logically concludes with a Four Christmases prequel where Vince Vaughn’s great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather hits Reese Witherpoon’s great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandmother over the head with a club and then insincerely marvels at the invention of fire is not a good trend at all.

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Not content with the book of Harry Potter fairy tales she recently wrote, or the Harry Potter encyclopedia she’s working on now, JK Rowling has found the time to write a prequel to the Harry Potter books, set before Harry first went to Hogwarts.

However, there’s only one copy of this 800-word Harry Potter prequel and it’s going to be auctioned for charity, so hardly anyone will be able to read it. But the rest of you shouldn’t worry – give it a year and Warner Bros will have bought the rights and padded it out into a brand new nine-hour movie trilogy. In space.

As any novelist and most parents will tell you, it’s difficult to kill off your own creation. That definitely seems to be the case with Harry Potter and JK Rowling. JK Rowling finished writing Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows a couple of years ago, but she just can’t seem to let go of the boy wizard.

Maybe that’s because Harry Potter has been JK Rowling’s closest companion for a decade. Maybe it’s because Harry Potter left a mark on society more indelible than anything else JK Rowling will ever write. Or maybe it’s because Harry Potter made JK Rowling so rich that all the jewelery she now owns is made from the crystallised remains of Jesus Christ. Who knows?

Whatever the reason, JK Rowling seems unable to stop sneaking out new Harry Potter morsels every couple of months. First it was the handwritten Harry Potter fairy tales that were given to friends and auctioned off. Then there’s the Harry Potter encyclopedia that’s definitely JK Rowling’s idea and she’ll sue you if you copy her. And now there’s a brand-new Harry Potter prequel.

Don’t get too excited, though – the Harry Potter prequel is only 800 words long and written on both sides of an A5 storycard, which means you’ll look like even more of a dick than usual if you try reading it on the tube. Also there’s only one copy and it’s probably going to cost about £5 million when it’s sold in a charity auction next month. Sky News reports:

Rowling has penned a prequel to the bestselling seven-book series describing what happened to Harry before he went to Hogwarts. The new piece is one of 13 story outlines written by famous writers for a charity auction to be held by Waterstones on June 10…. [Rowling] says at the end of the story, written on both sides of an A5 storycard: “From the prequel I am not working on – but that was fun!”

We’re not entirely sure what happens in this new Harry Potter prequel but, since Star Wars was such an obvious influence on the Harry Potter books, we believe that it’ll centre around a complex and obscure trade disagreement, show Lord Voldemort as the adorable little boy from Jingle All The Way and feature a stupid racially-dubious alien that everyone hates because he’s obviously just there to sell merchandising.

Still, it’s wrong of us to criticise JK Rowling here, because her exclusive one-off Harry Potter prequel is bound to raise an incredible amount of money for charity. Plus it’s infinitely better than her original idea for a story outline – basically an inky imprint of her arse and the words ‘I am rich! Suck it dickheads!’ angrily scrawled out underneath it in lipstick.