20th Century Fox's highly-anticipated sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is set 15 years after the events of 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where the apes have now taken over the San Francisco area and humans are struggling to survive. While doing press for his upcoming reboot RoboCop, Gary Oldman offered new details on his character Dreyfus, while revealing that director Matt Reeves wanted to tell a more human-centric story, as opposed to Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

When asked specifically about his character Dreyfus, the actor revealed he's the leader of a survivor community, who discovers a new colony of apes that were once thought to be destroyed.

"He's sort of the designated leader of this community, who were sort of lucky enough to survive the simian flu, that disease, and the ensuing social uprising from it. So they're sort of survivors of a community, and he was a police officer. He's known in the community, so he's more of the elected leader. We need power, and there's a power station, and some of my people go out to see if it's operational, if it's still out there, and they discover that there's a whole community of apes living there. We believed they were all completely fire-bombed and wiped out. He's experienced a great loss, personally, and there's only one answer to him, which is to wipe them out. I see him as sort of the hero of the piece."

While 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes focused on how these apes came into power, the actor revealed that director Matt Reeves wanted to focus on the human elements of this story for the sequel.

"Matt Reeves was more interested in not just keeping the franchise alive, but he wanted to make it more of a human story. He wanted to explore what had happened, and keep it more focused on the human side of it, before the story becomes the Planet of the Apes as we know it from the original."

It isn't quite clear yet if Dreyfus will return for Planet of the Apes 3, but 20th Century Fox is clearly confident enough in the sequel to green light a third movie, which Matt Reeves is returning to direct. The studio announced last month that Planet of the Apes 3 will be released on July 29, 2016.