Now 35 years on from watching the mighty gorilla on the TV, his dream is becoming reality. “I got some plasticine and I started to film some little movies, which then took me all the way through my teenage years.
#Peter jackson's king kong movie#
But I remember that it was on TV on a Friday night here in New Zealand and the very next day after I saw King Kong I started making little stop motion films with a Super 8 movie camera that my parents had used for home movies,” says Jackson. “I've no idea whether I would still be making films if I hadn't seen King Kong. Fox, before embarking on the route that brought him to Lord of the Rings and now King Kong, the iconic figure that started it all. Jackson then helmed The Frighteners, a ghost romp that starred Michael J. He began in the world of horror and fantasy with low budget movies like Brain Dead and Bad Taste that got his talents noticed and brought him to the attention of Hollywood. “When I saw King Kong, when I was nine years old, it did make me want to become a film maker,” reveals Jackson, who from that moment on knew his purpose in life was to create movie magic. Seeing those black and white images that transported Kong from the primitive splendour of Skull Island to the iconic final battle as aeroplanes buzzed round the beast while it perched high on the Big Apple's Empire State Building turned out to have a life altering impact on Jackson. Now, as a consequence of this phenomenon, Jackson is the hottest film maker on the planet, and he's more than midway through the painstaking process of bringing his latest magnificent obsession to the screen… a multi-million dollar version of King Kong.Ĭreating his vision of the mighty beast has been his passion since Jackson, an only child from a small coastal town in New Zealand, was overwhelmed by his first contact with the original 1933 movie. It seemed an enormous gamble to film the tales of Middle Earth in one marathon trilogy but Jackson's faith was fulfilled as the films became box office bonanzas and Academy Award winners. The bearded, bespectacled, tousle haired 43 year-old Kiwi defied convention when he determined to do Tolkein's epic Lord of the Rings his way. PETER JACKSON has gone from making rough figures out of plasticine to moulding some of the biggest movies in film history.