Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson CNZM (born October 31, 1961), is a film writer, director and producer born in Pukerua Bay, New Zealand to Bill and Joan Jackson. He first gained attention with his "splatstick" horror comedies, and came to prominence with his movie Heavenly Creatures, for which he shared an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen with Fran Walsh. Jackson is currently best-known as the director of the epic film trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, based on the books by J. R. R. Tolkien. He and his wife Fran Walsh have two children, Billy and Katie.

Jackson started his career in film as a fanatical hobbyist, creating small movies with simple technical means and with the help of a couple of friends. When one of his projects, the horror comedy Bad Taste, over a period of four years grew from the originally planned half-hour to a 90-minute feature film, Jackson and his crew took the end result to the film festival in Cannes, received critical acclaim and sold the rights to twelve countries. This allowed him to start a professional career as a film director.

Unlike some other New Zealand film directors, Jackson has remained in New Zealand to make films, preferring to have Hollywood come to him, rather than going to Hollywood to make his films. In the process he has set up or acquired a number of local businesses in order to support film production in New Zealand. He was an early user of computer enhancement technology and provided digital special effects to a number of Hollywood films by use of telecommunications and satellite links to transmit raw images and the enhanced results across the Pacific Ocean, making good use of time differences between New Zealand and North America.

Although appearing casual and relaxed, inevitably dressing in his trademark baggy shorts and without shoes, Jackson is a perfectionist with his film projects. He demands countless takes of every scene, pushes his special-effects crew to make their work seamless and invisible, and insists in authenticity in miniatures even on the sides that never appear in a film. On the other hand, many of his most beautiful scenes result from purely serendipitous shots taken while flying from one location to another. Despite this perfectionism, he has a reputation for needing significantly less budget than his peers to achieve spectacular results.

Universal Studios signed Peter Jackson -- for a reported US$20 million upfront-fee plus 20% take of the total box-office gross -- for his next film, a remake of the 1933 classic King Kong — the film that inspired him, aged 8-years-old, to become a film director. As of 2004, that would make him the highest-paid motion picture director in history. The film has a scheduled release date during the Christmas season of 2005, and has a reported cast of Oscar-nominated actress Naomi Watts, Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Colin Hanks and Andy Serkis.

Much speculation has occurred as to whether Jackson might direct a film of The Hobbit, prequel to The Lord of the Rings. His comments to date seem to indicate that he is interested, if the studios can work out the rights. Fans would expect any such production to include scenes set in Bag End and in Rivendell, and to cast a younger version of Bilbo Baggins, which audiences might find hard to accept if he looks too different from the version in Jackson's trilogy. Gandalf, Elrond, Legolas and Gollum would look essentially the same in a prequel, and the same actors could conceivably reprise their roles.

Jackson won three Academy Awards for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King:

Filmography

Bad Taste (1987)
Meet the Feebles (1989)
Braindead (a.k.a. Dead Alive) (1992)
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Forgotten Silver (1995) - mockumentary
The Frighteners (1996)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
King Kong (2005)

Peter Jackson

Filmography

See also