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Peter Jackson (b. October 31, 1961) is an Academy Award-winning New Zealand director, producer, and screenwriter best known for his work on the acclaimed Lord of the Rings film trilogy. All three films earned Oscar nominations and eleven wins for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King including Best Director, Best Screen Play and Best Visual Effects. His directing work on the film also earned him three Saturn Awards. He is also well known for his work on the 2005 remake King Kong. Jackson is also the owner the special effects company, Weta Digital.
Early Life
Jackson was raised in Pukerau Bay, North Island, New Zealand, the only child of Bill and Joan Jackson, both originally from England. As an only child, he depended on his imagination for entertainment. His interest in film began when his parents bought him an 8mm camera. His first amateur film was a WWII drama filmed in his garden with his friends. As a child, he was a fan of Thunderbirds and at 9, fell in love with King Kong which he remade using stop-motion models.
Career
He made many short films with friends and eventually got a job at The Evening Post which earned him enough money to purchase a 16mm camera. In 1983, he began shooting a ten minute short film, which grew into a feature film, Bad Taste. He filmed on weekends and applied to the New Zealand Film Commission for financial aid to help with the film's post production. Though the commission proved underwhelmed by the film, chairman, Jim Booth provided find the help complete the film. The film was finally completed in 1987 and the commission brought the film to the Cannes Film Festival where it was a critical success and recouped the filming costs. Following the success of Bad Taste Jim Booth left the NFZC to partner Jackson in WingNut Films.
Jackson met Fran Walsh and Stephen Sinclair during the making of Bad Taste and they began collaborating on a script for a zombie feature. Unable to gain enough funding to begin filming, they decided to work another film with Danny Mulheron, Meet the Feebles. The gross out puppet feature had successful showings at several film festivals earning them the money needed to produce the zombie comedy, Braindead. Braindead gained wide release and critical acclaim. The film was retitled Dead/Alive for the United States to avoid confusion with another film of the same name.
Jackson was asked to write a script for the 6th film in the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series. To his disappointment however, the script was rejected as another script had already been written and accepted. In 1994, he took a break from horror to work with Fran Walsh on the thriller Heavenly Creatures. The film depicted the events surrounding the Parker-Hulme murder, when, in the 1950s, two teenage girls in Christchurch murdered one of their mothers. Despite some ambivalence about how a horror director would approach the subject, the film exceeded expectations and earned Walsh and Jackson an Academy award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
In 1995, he directed a documentary Forgotten Silver about New Zealand filmmaker Colin McKenzie. The documentary aired on NZTV and established McKenzie as the inventor of color film and sound for motion pictures. McKenzie was also said to have filmed a man flying a plane prior to the Wright Brothers and attempted to make the film Salome before being killed in the Spanish Civil War and forgotten. Screened only in New Zealand the population became outraged to discover the film was a spoof, a mokcumentary about a man who never existed.
In 1994, he was approached by Robert Zemeckis to write a script for a Tales From the Crypt film. Jackson wrote a draft, which impressed Zemeckis so much he decided to expand the budget to create the film The Frighteners. The film was a commercial disappointment but nevertheless memorable and helped Jackson break into Hollywood.
He then began working on a remake of King Kong but Universal Studios decided against the film as remakes of Godzilla and Mighty Joe young were already in production. He was approached to work on the horror feature Freddy vs. Jason but decided against it as he was working on King Kong.
Lord of the Rings
Jackson put aside King Kong and acquired the rights to adapt the J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings novels for film from Saul Zaentz. He and wife Fran began working with Miramax on a two-film deal but Miramax wanted to make the story into a single film and he turned to New Line which granted him the opportunity to make three films. The films went into production on October 11, 1999 in New Zealand. It featured a large cast of actors including Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving and Dominic Monaghan. The first film, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring debuted on December 19, 2001. It earned over $871 million worldwide. Each subsequent film was more successful than the last. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers earned over $926 Million and the final film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King exceed $1 billion worldwide and won 11 Academy Awards including the Best Picture award, a breakthrough for Fantasy films.
King Kong
Following the enormous success of the trilogy, Jackson returned to long time love, King Kong. Universal Studios signed him to directe and produce the film and he worked with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens on the screenplay. For his work he was paid a record $20 million in advance. The film , a special effects bonanza, starred Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody and proved a commercial success earning over $550 million worldwide and setting DVD sales records. It earned three Oscar awards for sound editing and mixing and art direction.
The Hobbit
Jackson intended to work on the J.R.R. Tolkien novel The Hobbit to which New Line Cinema holds the rights to produce with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as distributor. However, when Jackson and Walsh became involved in a dispute over the amount Jackson was paid for The Fellowship of the Ring, Walsh refused to discuss new films before the dispute was resolved. The issue was finally resolved in December, 2007 and in a December 18, 2007 press release it was revealed that New Line Cinema, in corporation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would move ahead with production of The Hobbit and a possible sequel. Production was jeopardized once more in January 2008, when the Tolkien estate sued New Line for profits owed from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Despite setbacks, production of the film went ahead with Guillermo del Toro slated to direct. The film will be executive produced by Jackson and Walsh. The Hobbit is slated for a tentative 2011 release with a possible sequel to follow.
Other work
Jackson is slated to write, direct and produce The Lovely Bones based on the Alice Siebold novel about a 14 year old girl recalling the events surrounding her murder. The film is a break from big budget epics and is reminiscent of his work on Heavenly Creatures.
Jackson was slated to serve as executive producer on the film Halo based on the popular video game. The film was canceled however when the studio backed out. Jackson also plans to produce a remake of the 1954 WWII film The Dam Busters and has also acquired the rights to rock star Iggy Pop's autobiography and the fantasy novel series Temeraire.
Connections
Quotes
- I’d never heard of “King Kong.” But I sat there and I watched this film and it just had such a profound effect on me. It was the defining moment in my life as a filmmaker. It was a time that I said that’s what I want to do. I want to make movies just like “King Kong.” You know, dinosaurs, big gorillas— it’s everything that a nine year-old boy would fall in love with. And then most importantly at the end of it, I cried. So it had that emotional attachment as well, which a lot of escapism doesn’t have.
- “We made a promise to ourselves at the beginning of the process that we weren't going to put any of our own politics, our own messages or our own themes into these movies. What we were trying to do was to analyze what was important to Tolkien and to try to honor that. In a way, we were trying to make these films for him, not for ourselves.”
- “I think that George Lucas' 'Star Wars' films are fantastic. What he's done, which I admire, is he has taken all the money and profit from those films and poured it into developing digital sound and surround sound, which we are using today.”
- “It had such a profound affect on me as a 9-year-old that it made me want to make films. The next day I got my parents' Super 8 movie camera and started to do stop-motion animation with a clay dinosaur.”
- “As a gaming fan, I'm excited to bring Halo's premise, action and settings to the screen with all the specificity and reality today's technology can provide, ... Fran and I are intrigued by the unique challenges this project offers, and we're delighted to be working again with our friends at Universal, and with our new ones at Fox and Microsoft. I'm a huge fan of the game and look forward to helping it come alive on the cinema screen.”
- “That is precisely just what I don't want to be known as. I just want to go back to my own little filmmaking base, telling small New Zealand stories with my writing partner, Fran Walsh. I have no huge desire to be swallowed up by Hollywood.”
External Links
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