Peter Jackson (born October 31, 1961) is an Academy Award-winning New Zealand filmmaker best known as the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which he, along with Fran Walsh, his long time partner, and Philippa Boyens, adapted from the novels by J. R. R. Tolkien. He is also known for his 2005 remake of King Kong.
Jackson first gained attention with his "splatstick" horror comedies, and came to prominence with success and critical acclaim for Heavenly Creatures, for which he shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen with Walsh.
Jackson was born on 31 October 1961 in Pukerua Bay, New Zealand, an only child to Bill and Joan Jackson, both of whom were immigrants from England. As a child, Jackson was a film fan, growing up on Ray Harryhausen films as well as Thunderbirds and using his parents' Super 8 cine-camera. Citing King Kong as his favourite film at age 9, he attempted to remake it with his own stop-motion models.
Jackson started his career in film as a fanatical hobbyist, creating small films with simple technical means and with the help of his friends. He had no formal training in film-making, and was turned down for a job with the National Film Unit, the government body which produced publicity and tourist films about New Zealand. Eventually, Jackson learned about author J. R. R. Tolkien, after watching the first adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, although he learned that it ended half way through the story. After watching the film, he decided to go read Tolkien's books, in order to learn more about Tolkien's world and characters. He then got a series of other jobs which funded his early experiments in film-making. All shooting was done in the weekends as Jackson was working full-time. One of these early weekend films was to grow into his first feature film, Bad Taste, a movie about some aliens that come to earth with the desire of farming humans for food. He used several special effects, one of which consisted of some muesli hot cereal in a bowl mixed with green food colouring.
Over four years (from 1983 to 1987) the horror comedy Bad Taste grew from the originally planned 10 minute short to a 90-minute feature film. Jackson and his crew took the end result to the Cannes Film Festival, received critical acclaim and sold the rights to twelve countries. This allowed him to start a professional career as a film director. During post-production on Bad Taste, Jackson also met Fran Walsh who would one day become his wife and mother of his son Billy and his daughter Katie.
The success of Bad Taste attracted funding for Jackson's subsequent films. His second production was Meet the Feebles (1989), a warped musical comedy starring Muppet-style puppets. This was Jackson's first collaboration with Richard Taylor, who would subsequently work on all Jackson's movies except Forgotten Silver. Although not a horror movie, Meet the Feebles is in keeping with the other movies from this period - like Jackson's other early work, Feebles features gross-out humour (including the use of vomit), adult themes and recognisably Wellington locations.
Jackson's next project was Braindead (1992) (released in North America as Dead Alive). Originally a Spanish co-production, this splatter comedy was a reversal of the usual horror plot - rather than keeping the zombies out of his place of refuge, the hero attempts to keep them inside, while maintaining a facade of normality.
Released in 1994, Heavenly Creatures was a major change for Jackson in terms of both style and tone. The film depicts the story of the Parker-Hulme murder in which two teenage girls in 1950s Christchurch murdered the mother of one of the girls. Based on his previous filmography, many New Zealanders were apprehensive about how Jackson would treat his subject matter. The early scene in which Parker and Hulme run screaming and covered in blood may be an allusion to these early films, but most commentators felt that Jackson and his co-writer Fran Walsh had dealt with the events sensitively and appropriately. It received considerable critical acclaim, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
The following year Jackson released a 'mockumentary', Forgotten Silver (1995). This claimed to tell the story of (fictional) New Zealand film pioneer Colin McKenzie who had supposedly invented colour film and 'talkies', and attempted to make an epic film of Salome before being killed in the Spanish Civil War and forgotten by the world. The film was screened on New Zealand television as if it were fact, and its spoof nature was only revealed the following day. Many people were outraged at being fooled, and the number of people who believed the increasingly improbable story is testimony to Jackson's skill at playing on the New Zealand national myth of a nation of innovators and forgotten trail-blazers.In the meantime, Jackson and Walsh welcomed their children, Billy (1995) and Katie (1996) into the world.
The acclaim received by Heavenly Creatures led to Jackson's directing the Robert Zemeckis production, The Frighteners (1996), starring Michael J. Fox. This was a commercial failure and most critics were disappointed that it displayed neither the anarchistic humor of Jackson's early movies nor the sensitivity of Heavenly Creatures. Work on a remake of King Kong was shelved by Universal Studios (partly because Mighty Joe Young, another giant gorilla movie, had already gone into production). When pre-production was set on halt, Jackson and Walsh focused on another of Jackson's dreams: to make a film of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.Jackson earned the rights to a film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's novel in 1997 from Saul Zaentz. Originally working with Miramax towards a two-film production, he was soon put under pressure to render the story as a single film, and eventually made a new deal with New Line for a trilogy in 1998.
Principal photography went on from October 11, 1999 to December 22, 2000 with Jackson monitoring as many as seven units across New Zealand locations and sets. With the benefit of post-production on each film for their December releases, the films were huge successes and sent Jackson's popularity soaring.Jackson's mother Joan died 3 days before the release of the first movie in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. There was a special showing of the film after her funeral.Following The Return of the King, Jackson lost a large amount of weight (over 50 lb/22.5 kg) to the point of being unrecognizable to some fans. According to the British Daily Telegraph he attributes his weight loss to his diet. He said, "I just got tired of being overweight and unfit, so I changed my diet from hamburgers to yogurt and muesli and it seems to work."
Universal Studios signed Peter Jackson for his first film following The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a remake of the 1933 classic King Kong — the film that inspired him to become a film director when he was 9 years old. He was reportedly being paid a fee of US$20 million upfront, the highest salary ever paid to a film director in advance of production, against a 20 percent take of the box-office rentals (the portion of the price of the ticket that goes to the film distributor, in this case Universal). The film was released on December 14, 2005, and grossed around US$550 million worldwide. Its release on home video and DVD was even bigger, as it set records for a Universal Pictures DVD in sales figures.
Jackson is currently directing a version of Alice Sebold's bestseller, The Lovely Bones. He has said the film will be a welcome relief from his larger-scale epics. The storyline's combination of fantasy aspects and themes of murder bears some similarities to Heavenly Creatures.
Synopsis
In 1973, Susie Salmon (Ronan) is raped and murdered by a neighbor, George Harvey (Tucci), a serial killer of young girls. She finds herself in Heaven, observing her family as they grieve for her on earth. She also watches her killer who, having covered his tracks successfully, is preparing to murder again. Susie struggles to balance her desire for vengeance on Harvey and her desire to have her family recover from their loss.