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.’
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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.
‘They were excited by it, and, needless to say, they actually put it in their front foyer,’ he reports.
Four weeks after that the film fell apart.
Taylor doesn’t hide the amusement in his voice. ‘And Peter, in true Kiwi form, asked for it back. And we got it back.’ And there it sits, a warning to all-comers: you need to be resilient in this game.
Looking back from the vantage of having finally made his version of King Kong in the wake of The Lord of the Rings, the undoing of their first attempt is viewed by Jackson and Taylor as a lucky escape;