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

‘The hell with it,’ cried Harvey, ‘let’s forget The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings is a better-known title anyway. Let’s just go right to The Lord of the Rings. Two movies shot back-to-back.’

Still, with no sign of an agreement with Zaentz being reached, Jackson was growing increasingly nervous. The clock was ticking on his Weta project, even his career. It was becoming increasingly clear they were going to have to make something else in the meantime.

‘I will never forget it,’ recalls Kamins, and true to his word he can remember the exact day: ‘Monday, April first, nineteen ninety-six, I went to a premiere of Primal Fear at Paramount. I come home and there’s a message from Peter on my answering machine. This is like eleven p.m. at night. And he never calls me at home that late.’

Jackson’s recorded voice carried a seriousness Kamins had heard only rarely. ‘I need to know what my next movie is by the end of the week, otherwise all these great people that I put together to do the visual effects for The Frighteners are going to leave …’

As is standard practice, six weeks before the end of any movie the freelance visual effects team — and any other department employed on a film-by-film basis — is entitled to start looking for their next job. The buzz had gotten around about the visual effects work on The Frighteners, and the more established effects houses were reaching out to the Weta team, trying to entice them back to LA.

Meanwhile, Kamins was maintaining a constant vigil for any opportunities for his client, as he puts it, playing ‘backstop’ on Jackson’s career. Given the mercurial nature of the film business, any director would be foolhardy not to have more than one plate spinning at a time. He swiftly engaged a strategy to push forward on any one of the projects he and Jackson had in various stages of development.

Besides The Lord of the Rings, two other noticeably non-Miramax movies were to emerge. Confirming that this was a defining period in Jackson’s life and career, each would have a significant influence on his future. That first-look deal with Miramax notwithstanding, Jackson headed to LA to begin discussing the alternatives. He didn’t see himself as acting in bad faith. The Lord of the Rings had been his priority, but despite Kamins urgent pressing of Miramax it showed little sign of being resolved.

‘So we spoke to Universal about King Kong,’ says Jackson, ‘and I did a lot of meetings with Fox about Planet of the Apes.’

A Planet of the Apes reboot had been jostling about in development for a number of years. Spreading its allegorical net to include the fear of atomic destruction and the civil rights movement, Franklin J. Schaffner’s biting, apocalyptic, 1968 Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston, could fairly be considered a classic (if not its diminishing sequels). Jackson certainly thought so — he has some original John Chambers’ prosthetics in his collection and once designed his own set of ape masks for another of his novice ventures into filmmaking, The Valley, which paid homage to the first film’s devastating ending.

By the early 1990s, 20th Century Fox were keen to revive the idea of a future where the evolutionary order has been upended and apes have subjugated humanity. Some big directors had toyed with the hair-brained mythology, with all its juicy metaphorical potential, amongst them Oliver Stone, Sam Raimi, Chris Columbus, Roland Emmerich and Philip Noyce.

Jackson and Walsh had initially become involved as screenwriters in 1992, before Heavenly Creatures, only for their concept to fall out of favour with a regime change at Fox. But in 1996, following another bloody succession at the helm of the studio, the project was back on the table with Jackson potentially directing.

Ever the traditionalist, central to Jackson’s enchanting simian vision was the return of actor Roddy McDowell, who had played the pro-human chimp Cornelius in the original. He’d even gone to lunch with the actor and producer Harry J. Ufland to pitch his concept. McDowell had been resistant to doing another Apes film: decades might have passed but he could still remember itching beneath those prosthetics. Unbowed, Jackson pitched him Renaissance of the Planet of the Apes. It was to be a continuation of the first line of movies, and the apes have had a flowering of their artistic ability. ‘Like Florence or Venice, the Ape World has gained artistic beauty,’ he explains. McDowell would play an aged Cornelius-type character, sort of a primate Leonardo da Vinci. McDowell was enthralled. ‘Count me in,’ he told them.

Amid this renaissance of ape culture, the gorillas would cover the police patrols, the chimps were the artists, and, Jackson laughs, ‘I was going to have a big, fat orangutan with all the jowls as the Pope. It was a satirical look at religion.’ Everywhere the camera turned we would see statues of apes; then in one twist a statue gets knocked over and beneath the marble, which turns out to be plaster, we glimpse a human face.

‘It is all a façade!’ enthuses Jackson, the old excitement returning. ‘And we were actually going to have a half-human, half-ape character too that Roddy’s ape character had in hiding, because he would be killed if the ape society found out that there was this hybrid. It was quite interesting …’

Re-pitching his idea (for which, working on spec, he and Walsh had never earned a cent) to Fox’s new studio heads, Peter Chernin and Tom Rothman, he was informed the studio were also in talks with James Cameron to produce and Arnold Schwarzenegger to star.

‘We got an offer from Planet of the Apes, aggressive up front,’ says Kamins. ‘Not on the back end, because they couldn’t afford it because of Jim and Arnold.’

Jackson and Walsh had their qualms: this would be a big studio film and prey to big studio interference. Their natural independence, the very way they worked, would come under intense pressure.

Still the mind boggles a little at the notion: Peter Jackson directing Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Planet of the Apes movie produced by James Cameron, set in a crumbling ape Renaissance shot in New Zealand …

Jackson wouldn’t meet Cameron until 2005. Getting along straightaway, the Kiwi found himself wondering what might have happened if they had said yes. Tim Burton would eventually step into the project in 2001 for a tepid reverse-engineered spin on the original 1968 film with Mark Wahlberg; although the prosthetics masks, created by Rick Baker, were fabulous.

Many moons later, the legacy of the Apes would return to Jackson’s faraway kingdom. Following Weta’s industry-transforming breakthroughs not only with motion-capture but the filigree textures of digital fur through Gollum and then Kong, when Fox rolled the dice on the Apes saga once more with Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011, it was Weta who created the now stunningly lifelike digital simians, with Andy Serkis starring as the sentient chimp, Caesar.

*

Since the 1976 debacle, King Kong had remained in the keeping of Universal, the very studio where The Frighteners was about to be released sooner rather than later.

The plan had been to lean toward its horror credentials and release the undead comedy around Halloween in 1996. Despite Jackson’s best intentions to make a family film, The Frighteners had been landed with an adult R-rating (15 in the UK). In the meantime, however, Daylight was running late. Universal’s tunnel-bound Sylvester Stallone disaster movie, featuring a young Viggo Mortensen, had gone overschedule and was going to miss its 17 July release date.

Seizing the opportunity, Zemeckis called Jackson: ‘I want you to put together a short effects reel for me so I can take it into the studio.’ He intended to make a move to put The Frighteners into the more lucrative summer slot in place of the delayed Daylight.

When Weta’s visual effects proved to be on a par with ILM, Universal got excited and agreed to the July slot, and set about repositioning The Frighteners as a new visual effects extravaganza featuring Marty McFly!

Hollywood was becoming greatly intrigued. This wunderkind from over the ocean kept changing hats. First, he was the horror bandit, gorier even than Sam Raimi. Then he was the Weinsteins’ arthouse darling who brought such dark sensitivity to Heavenly Creatures. And now he was the new George Lucas, nurturing his own visual effects company.

‘So now the narrative’s starting to unfold very differently,’ says Kamins intently. Fox are making their overtures about Renaissance of the Planet of the Apes, The Frighteners is all of a sudden a summer movie and whispers of Jackson’s devotion to the great 1933 stop-motion marvel have reached Universal’s vice-president Lenny Kornburg. It was Kornburg who slyly tempted Jackson with his heart’s desire: ‘Would you have an interest in doing King Kong?’

What a moment of infinite possibility this must have seemed. And it would prove too good to be true. Yet, for a few weeks, Jackson had in front of him the chance of adapting Tolkien’s beloved bestseller, reviving Charlton Heston’s dystopian talking ape thriller, or remaking the film that had, in many ways, charted the course for his life. Which would, in fact, count as his second attempt to remake King Kong.

A twelve-year-old Jackson had constructed the Empire State Building out of cardboard boxes and turned a bed sheet into a cyclorama of New York that featured the Chrysler Building, Hudson River and assorted bridges for an aborted version of the classic. He still has the jointed model of Kong built from wire, foam rubber and a fox stole his mother no longer wore (at least, she didn’t now). When he finally came to remake King Kong in 2005, Jackson flew out the original 1933 eighteen-inch armature of Kong designed by Willis O’Brien and sculptor Marcel Delgado, along with its collector Bob Burns, to set in an act of quasi-holy symbolism.

Jackson was fired up by the possibility of any remake of King Kong, but his own? Astonishingly, given the company she kept, Walsh had never seen the original. An oversight that was swiftly put to rights, and she was convinced enough for the talks to intensify with Universal.

While the projects circled like 747s awaiting permission to land, Jackson’s long-time lawyer Peter Nelson drew up a pro-forma contract that could apply to any one of them. Together Nelson, Kamins and Jackson were determined to set the terms of engagement. There were two significant stipulations. Firstly, that a ‘considerable sum’ be guaranteed by the studio for research and development into special effects. Secondly, that Jackson become a ‘first dollar gross participant’ meaning he would receive a percentage of the gross earnings of the film — not the net profit, which according to the elusive magic of studio accounting seldom seemed to materialize. He would also get final cut.

By autumn 1996, still undecided over which pathway smelled fairest, Jackson and Walsh took a holiday, driving around the South Island, taking in the stunning scenery that would so readily lend itself to Middle-earth. ‘We decided that during this trip we would figure out which film we were going to make,’ he says, and, essentially at this stage, it was a choice of two. Waiting for The Lord of the Rings to be ‘absolutely nailed’ by Harvey was too risky, too frustrating. Unless there was a radical breakthrough in the Middle-earth standoff, it was a case of which ape movie?

‘Both Fox and Universal were happy for us to jump into one of their films.’ And for Jackson it was the personal connection that finally told. ‘We decided to do Kong.’

First, though, he had to let Harvey know.

Making the connection across the thousands of miles that lay between New York and the South Island, Jackson got straight to the point. ‘Harvey, we are not going to wait any longer, we are doing Kong.’

Harvey went straight to force ten, the betrayed producer: ‘THIS IS NOT HAPPENING! I AM NOT HEARING THIS! YOU’RE NOT TELLING ME THIS! YOU ARE NOT TELLING ME THIS!’

It was Jackson’s first taste of the Miramax head’s notorious spleen. But he knew well enough the stories of screaming fits that had reduced both M. Night Shyamalan and Uma Thurman to public tears and narrowly missed causing a fistfight with Quentin Tarantino.

Shaken, Jackson managed to remain calm.

‘Well, I am telling you this, Harvey. We’ll do it. Get the rights and after Kong we’ll come back and do Rings.’

The phone went dead.

Kamins, aware they were gambling with an important relationship, admits that Harvey was in his rights to be angry. And, with Harvey, angry always meant apoplectic. ‘He had already agreed, in fairness to him, to suspend and extend the period of our first-look deal so that Peter could go and make The Frighteners. We didn’t have a movie in development with Harvey when The Frighteners was proposed. And Harvey understood it was an opportunity for Peter. So we sort of stopped the clock on the deal and then added whatever time he spent on The Frighteners to the end of the deal. Now we’re coming to Harvey and we’re putting him in a situation where he effectively has to bid for Peter’s services on his next film. The only thing we wanted to do was The Lord of the Rings. And Harvey didn’t yet have the rights.’

Feeling guilty that the first-look deal with Miramax was proving fruitless, and conscious The Lord of the Rings was still dependant on Harvey, it was Jackson who devised a solution that might placate the Miramax chieftain’s ego. It would be a plan that would turn out to benefit Miramax in another, unexpected fashion. Jackson was on the ferry back to Wellington, crossing the often-turbulent waters of Cook Strait, when it occurred to him to see if he could convince Universal to allow Miramax to co-finance King Kong. Indeed, Universal were interested in striking a deal.

Miramax would come on as a fifty per cent partner on King Kong and Universal would take a fifty per cent stake in The Lord of the Rings. That would surely keep Harvey calm, Jackson reasoned. But Harvey, wheeler-dealer extraordinaire, pouted that Universal was getting two films out of the deal while poor Miramax was getting only one. He had his eye on another treasure; there was a property he coveted that had been languishing at Universal. It was a script by Tom Stoppard called Shakespeare in Love.

Three years hence, Shakespeare in Love would be nominated for thirteen Oscars, winning seven, including stealing Best Picture from under the nose of the favourite, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (which would have a major influence on Jackson’s battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings).

Jackson shakes his head. ‘To balance this deal up, so it was two for two as it were, he got Universal to give him, without any investment or involvement, the film that would win all these Oscars.’

He lets the irony slip into his voice. ‘We were tangentially responsible for getting Shakespeare in Love made.’

*

In the foyer of Weta Workshop, still located where Park Road swerves decisively to the right and becomes Camperdown Road, sits a stunning bronze maquette of King Kong wrestling a T-Rex. The two creatures are so tightly entwined you have to get up close to trace where gigantic gorilla ends and struggling dinosaur begins. It sits there as both a monument to the talents of those who work within these bountiful halls, greatly expanded over years of profitable world building, and a salutary symbol of what it is to wrestle with Hollywood.

Through the latter half of 1996, as Jackson and Walsh got to grips with the script for King Kong, months of research and development went into the visual effects that were going to bring Skull Island to fetid and thrilling life. Yet more artists and technicians had been brought in from all around the world to this far-off island to bolster the ranks of the sister divisions of Weta Workshop and Weta Digital. They were over six months into manufacturing.

The Workshop’s famously loquacious head Richard Taylor takes up the tale. ‘We already had some animatronic creatures sculpted, and it started to get wobbly. We could feel this undertow of uncertainty.’ He suggested to Jackson he make a sculpture of Kong fighting a Tyrannosaur (and Jackson was not skimping on dinosaurs), which they could use as a presentation piece to Universal to try and ‘invest in them how exciting the moment could be’. Over the following two weeks he sculpted the very piece that now sits outside his office. Five weeks later it arrived at Universal.