Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth
Ian Nathan

Andy Serkis

The definitive history of Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth saga, Anything You Can Imagine takes us on a cinematic journey across all six films, featuring brand-new interviews with Peter, his cast & crew. From the early days of daring to dream it could be done, through the highs and lows of making the films, to fan adoration and, finally, Oscar glory.LightsA nine-year-old boy in New Zealand’s Pukerua Bay stays up late and is spellbound by a sixty-year-old vision of a giant ape on an island full of dinosaurs. This is true magic. And the boy knows that he wants to be a magician.CameraFast-forward twenty years and the boy has begun to cast a spell over the film-going audience, conjuring gore-splattered romps with bravura skill that will lead to Academy recognition with an Oscar nomination for Heavenly Creatures. The boy from Pukerua Bay with monsters reflected in his eyes has arrived, and Hollywood comes calling. What would he like to do next? ‘How about a fantasy film, something like The Lord of the Rings…?’ActionThe greatest work of fantasy in modern literature, and the biggest, with rights ownership so complex it will baffle a wizard. Vast. Complex. Unfilmable. One does not simply walk into Mordor – unless you are Peter Jackson.Anything You Can Imagine tells the full, dramatic story of how Jackson and his trusty fellowship of Kiwi filmmakers dared take on a quest every bit as daunting as Frodo’s, and transformed JRR Tolkien’s epic tale of adventure into cinematic magic, and then did it again with The Hobbit. Enriched with brand-new interviews with Jackson, his fellow filmmakers and many of the films’ stars, Ian Nathan’s mesmerising narrative whisks us to Middle-earth, to gaze over the shoulder of the director as he creates the impossible, the unforgettable, and proves that film-making really is ‘anything you can imagine’.

Copyright (#ud0df07ec-0781-5e41-97d2-67f3dccaa585)

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Ian Nathan 2018

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photograph © Paul Stuart/Camera Press London

Ian Nathan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008192471

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008192488

Version: 2018-09-21

Dedication (#ud0df07ec-0781-5e41-97d2-67f3dccaa585)

For Kat, who can’t abide hobbits.

Epigraph (#ud0df07ec-0781-5e41-97d2-67f3dccaa585)

‘The artist-initiated epic is an obsessive testing of possibilities … It comes, too, from a conviction, or a hope, that if you give popular audiences the greatest you have in you they will respond.’

Pauline Kael

‘It would be easier to film The Odyssey. Much less happens in it.’

J.R.R. Tolkien

Contents

Cover (#ue23f6753-ebb1-5f54-b4bb-2bc6c195004f)

Title Page (#ucee77b25-a416-50ab-93b5-15607c2472cd)

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Foreword by Andy Serkis

Prologue: Journey's End

1: Sillification

2: An Unexpected Director

3: Many Meetings

4: Words and Pictures

5: Concerning Hobbits

6: Heavenly Creatures

7: Jamboree

8: Miramar’s Mecca of Merry Souls

9: Proof of Concept

10: The Monsters and the Critics

11: To the Edge of the World

12: Junkie

13: MASSIVE

14: Return to the Edge of the World

15: The Music of Middle-earth

16: King of a Golden Hall

17: Legacy of the Ring