- [Man] What took her, Carl?
- You saw something.
(gunfire)
(dramatic music)
- And, action!
(woman screaming)
(music builds)
- No!
(Kong Kong roaring)
(music ends)
- [Jackson] And action!
- [Narrator] After writing, producing, and directing
the Lord of the Rings trilogy,
the second most lucrative franchise in Hollywood history,
Peter Jackson went back to his roots.
- Viewing King Kong as a nine-year-old was
the moment that I thought "I want to make movies".
I want to be able to make movies just like King Kong.
So I'm remaking King Kong as a fan who wants
to see a high-tech remake of this wonderful story.
We're just gonna do one more for luck.
- [Narrator] He assembled the cast,
including Academy Award winner, Adrian Brody,
Academy Award nominee, Naomi Watts,
and Jack Black as a not so successful filmmaker
trying to make a mark.
- Of course it's deserted.
The place is a ruin.
- I didn't want to get into a situation where
because Kong was a digital character,
he was basically invisible.
- In order to make Kong more lifelike
Jackson brought in Andy Serkis,
known for breathing life into another famous CGI character.
Gollum in Lord of the Rings.
- I feel like, completely transported
when I look at his face.
I'm not looking at him wearing a funny suit.
I'm looking at him with all this behavior.
I can't imagine who else could make me feel
what he's making me feel.
- Just because we can't touch each other doesn't mean
that we can't really, you know,
get inside each other's heads.
- As King Kong, he is not a human.
I was looking into the eyes of an insane beast.
- Andy will bring to this a very similar thing
that he brought to Gollum.
- The rage that he displayed when I saw him as Kong
was so weird.
'Cause it was like that is not Andy.
(Kong roars)
I don't know what the hell that is.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Now to bring his vision to life
Jackson turned to his own private army
of artists and technicians to create renderings
known as conceptual art.
- So one of the very first things that I had
our conceptual artists draw up when they were
was a whole series of pictures
of Kong fighting a T-Rex.
The one in Newsweek that we released is a
good example of that.
The design of Kong is not the final design of Kong.
The T-Rex doesn't really look like the T-Rexs in the movie
because these are not creature design drawings.
These are just inspirational mood and atmosphere.
- [Narrator] Once Jackson approved the concepts
it was time to start the Kong-sized task of construction.
- [Woman] They have to be huge
because they need to be enormous.
- [Jackson] (over megaphone)
Park over the yellow line towards the wall.
- [Worker] We're going over it with a blow torch.
- [Jackson] There's a huge number of people working
very hard at the moment to get ready ahead of us.
It's like laying the rails in front of a steam train
that's bearing down behind them.
(rock music)
- [Foreman] Rock shape, rock form.
But you can roll on it and you don't break your elbow.
- And cut, that's good.
- [Narrator] After the sets were built,
it was up to the art department to come in
and put the icing on the cake.
- [Art Director] ...maybe another one here.
Great, excellent!
Peter's a real hands-on filmmaker.
Always has been.
Same thing, I say hey over here.
- I was really determined that our conceptual designs
were actually achievable.
(workers shouting)
- There are actually a whole lot of rodents
that live in the underground.
They're all smoking, that's what the steam's all about.
- I figure that King Kong has probably got twice
as many shots as we had in all three Lord of the Rings films
put together.
- The original 1933 King Kong was my favorite movie
of all time and I guess for that reason,
I wanted to remake it.
I just thought a version of this wonderful story
told with the technology that we have available
to us today would be a really amazing thing.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Thousands of special effects,
all star cast,
director Peter Jackson's first film since the astounding
success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
An epic retelling 1933 classic told by a master filmmaker
with state-of-the-art technology.
King Kong is back
and bigger than ever.
(T-Rex and Kong roaring)
(dramatic music fades out)