Burton Finishes Apes; Ending Leaked

July 24 -- Director Tim Burton says he's surprised that last-minute tinkering on his big summer expenditure, Planet of the Apes, has all of Hollywood in a buzz.

"How is this news?" muses the funky-haired creator of Sleepy Hollow and Edward Scissorhands to the Toronto Sun.

"Who cares?" he asked, suggesting that such a schedule is the norm for him. "What person who's working on a film isn't, like, going crazy or working on it right to the end? … They have to grab the film can from your clenched fist. What would be a lot more interesting would be if you found a filmmaker who says, 'Great, I finished my movie and handed it to the studio two weeks before release. I'm going on vacation now.'"

Burton and producer Richard Zanuck said there was never a question of missing the film's immovable July 27 opening date.

Animal Sex Scenes?The director also admits astonishment at persistent but fictional reports of an ape-human sex scene between stars Mark Wahlberg, who plays an astronaut who crash-lands on the monkey-dominated globe, and Helena Bonham Carter, who plays a sympathetic chimpanzee.

"Oh, my God! What kind of people are on the Internet?" Burton recalls thinking. "I mean, animal sex scenes? I don't know if that's even possible in a Hollywood American movie. … We would never have been able to show that movie anywhere."

Drudge Called a Spoilsport — and WorseMeanwhile, the end of the film, which has been a closely guarded secret but is definitely not the same twist as in the 1968 original, has been given away online by Internet columnist Matt Drudge. Drudge, who found fame after breaking news of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, is being taken to task by Ain't It Cool News' movie guru, Harry Knowles, for not labeling his article with a "spoiler alert," as is customary among movie lovers.

Knowles writes in an article titled "Matt Drudge: Royal Ass" that he wants to "bitch-slap" Drudge, whose slip he calls "utterly unforgivable."

Drudge posted the following response on Ain't It Cool News: "Spoilers? Reporting on a controversial news-making scene in a coming movie … is called a spoiler?" Drudge then suggests that the only "spoilers" Knowles would know anything about are the assortment of "cakes, brownies, cookies, eclairs, doughnuts, Ho-hos, and Snoballs currently rotting under your keyboard." Ouch!