King Kong is a remake of the 1933 RKO Radio Pictures release of the same name (see above entry). The original film was directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and starred Fay Wray as “Ann Darrow,” Robert Armstrong as “Carl Denham” and Bruce Cabot as “Jack Driscoll.” Ruth Rose and Joseph Creelman wrote the first film’s screenplay, and Cooper and Edgar Wallace were credited with “original idea.” Cooper and Wallace received an onscreen story credit on the 2005 film. Portions of composer Max Steiner's score for the 1933 film was incorporated into James Newton Howard's score for the 2005 film. Willis O’Brien conceived the first film’s groundbreaking stop-motion animation. The closing credits of the 2005 King Kong included the following dedication: "This film is dedicated with love and respect to the original adventurers of Skull Island: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, Willis H. O'Brien, Max Steiner, Robert Armstrong and . . . the incomparable Fay Wray. They continue to inspire all those who follow in their footsteps." The filmmakers thanked a number of people in the ending credits, among them, actress and former vaudevillian June Havoc, Wray’s daughter Victoria Riskin and other individuals and companies affiliated with various aspects of the production.
       As noted in many sources, director Peter Jackson was inspired to become a filmmaker after he saw the original King Kong on television as a nine year old in New Zealand. In a 19 Jan 1997 The Times (London) article, Jackson claimed that the day after he saw the 1933 picture, he got out his “'parents’ Super 8 camera and started taking pictures of the Plasticine dinosaurs. I can’t tell you what an effect it had on me.’” Six years later the still-obsessed Jackson made a cardboard cutout of the Empire State Building and painted a Manhattan backdrop, intending to recreate the film’s final sequence using a King Kong puppet. Over the years, Jackson has acquired many items, including O’Brien’s special effects camera and various King Kong models, associated with the original film.
       According to The Times (London) article, executives at Universal, which released the 2005 film, did not know that King Kong was Jackson’s favorite movie when they suggested he direct the remake. Universal first approached Jackson about the film in early 1996, while he was making the horror picture The Frighteners for the studio. The Times article stated that Universal had first offered the film to Roland Emmerich, who had directed the studio’s 1996 blockbuster Independence Day. As noted in various sources, Universal’s original offer to Jackson included a $6.5 million director’s fee.
       Jackson and his co-screenwriter and life partner, Fran Walsh, completed a draft of the script in Dec 1996, according to the The Times (London) article. Shooting was scheduled to start in May 1997. The book The Making of King Kong: The Official Guide to the Motion Picture stated that Jackson first planned to use a combination of stop-motion animation, animatronics and digital effects to bring Kong and Skull Island to life. For six months, a large crew at Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, Jackson’s Stone Street production houses near Wellington, New Zealand, worked on the project, designing and building miniatures of Skull Island, Kong and various other creatures.
       Although Jackson reportedly had always intended to set the story during the Depression, an Apr 2003 Newsweek article stated that in the first draft of the script, the Ann Darrow character was written as a “Lara Croftian explorer.” Kate Winslet, who had starred in Jackson’s 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, and Minnie Driver were mentioned as possible stars in the The Times (London) article.
       According to a 17 Jan 1997 HR article, the King Kong remake, which was to be a joint venture between Universal and Disney’s Miramax Pictures, was shelved temporarily because of feared competition with Disney’s 1998 remake of the 1949 RKO picture Mighty Joe Young, and TriStar’s big-budget remake of the 1956 Japanese film Godzilla, released in the same year.
       Initially, production on King Kong was rescheduled for 1998, but as noted in various sources, the subsequent box-office failure of Mighty Joe Young and Godzilla caused Miramax to back out of the project. Jackson then began work on his hugely successful Lord of the Rings trilogy, which took seven years to complete. During that period, Philippa Boyens, who also worked with Jackson and Walsh on the Lord of the Rings screenplays, was brought in to collaborate on the King Kong script.
       In Aug 2003, news sources announced that Jackson had signed a $20 million contract against 20 percent of the gross to write, produce and direct King Kong. Jackson’s deal included salaries for collaborators Walsh and Boyens. After Boyens was hired, the script returned solidly to its 1933 roots. The 2005 version contains numerous allusions and tributes to the original, including a line in which Denham curses an RKO director named Cooper for stealing his leading lady. Some of the remake’s dialogue was taken directly from the 1933 script, most notably Denham’s closing “beauty and beast” line. In addition, dancers who appear in Kong’s New York show were dressed like the Skull Island tribesmen from the original movie. According to The Making of King Kong, the prop department of the 2005 film made exact replicas of the prop spears used by the 1933 dancers, which Jackson had purchased in an auction. Music that accompanied their dance was taken directly from Steiner’s score for the 1933 picture.
       Although the remake retained the first film’s overall structure and storyline, Jackson, Walsh and Boyens expanded on and changed some critical plot elements. In the original, Jack Driscoll, Ann’s human love interest, is the ship’s first mate. The 1933 script had neither a writer character, nor a male co-star. In the remake, lines spoken by “Bruce Baxter” as his film-within-a-film character were lines spoken by Bruce Cabot in the original. Ann’s character is more developed in the remake than in the 1933 film. In the original, the impoverished Ann is easily persuaded to join the voyage and is terrified of Kong throughout the story. As noted by many critics, in the original, Ann and Kong have an odd sexual relationship, but in the remake, their relationship is born out of respect and friendship.
       Denham in the original film is more sympathetic than in the remake, and is not suffering financial or legal difficulties. In Son of Kong, the 1933 sequel to the original King Kong (See Entry), however, Denham does dodge creditors and subpoenas resulting from Kong’s rampage through Manhattan. The original Denham was based on Merian C. Cooper, a larger-than-life adventurer/filmmaker. In The Making of King Kong, Boyens claimed that, in addition to Cooper, her revised Denham character was based somewhat on director Orson Welles and that the idea for having Denham steal his own film came from a story she once heard about Welles. In the 1960s, Welles reportedly used some of the money given to him by backers to make a Western to shoot a completely different film, Falstaff (see above entry). Jackson also used Welles as a model for actor Jack Black’s hair and costumes. According to a 5 Dec 2005 Newsweek article, Jackson picked Black to play Denham after repeated viewings of Black’s 2003 film School of Rock, in which Black played a resourceful, rascally teacher.
       According to The Making of King Kong, except for the opening and closing theater scenes, the entire film was studio-made. Jackson and his film crew went to great lengths to make the production as detailed and historically accurate as possible. The film’s complex visual approach combined miniature and motion-capture footage with regular live-action, “green-screen” live-action (in which actors play against a blank green screen onto which computer-generated special effects shots are added later) and live-action against motion-capture footage. According to a Dec 2005 Entertainment Weekly article, the final film contained 1,600 computer-generated shots, which required 500 animators to construct.
       When conceiving Skull Island, the production design team, led by Grant Major, used the artwork of nineteenth-century illustrator Gustave Doré as inspiration. (Doré was also a visual source for the 1933 King Kong.) In keeping with Doré’s style, Jackson wanted close objects to be silhouetted and dark, and distant objects to be flatter and brighter. Jungle footage was derived from a combination of live-action sets, miniatures and digital elements. Wind machines helped make the jungle sets appear more natural.
       Inspiration for the island’s inhabitants came from a National Geographic magazine photo, according to The Making of King Kong. The photo depicted an African tribesman with extremely dark skin and eyes that were reddened with berry juice for ceremonial purposes. To create a similar look for the island villagers, the makeup department made red sclera contact lenses to fit over the performers’ eyes. The actors, who were of Asian and African descent, were spray-painted to make their skin appear darker. The village set was built on Mount Crawford, near Weta. Only the lower third, or forty feet, of the village set was built to scale. The top portion was filmed as miniatures.
       For the New York sets, according to The Making of King Kong, the design team did extensive historical research, finding images and blueprints from the period and reproducing some exactly. Blueprints and photographs of the Empire State Building were followed carefully to recreate the building, both as sets and digitally. Sets included the building’s entrance lobby, observation decks, stairways, exterior walkway, ladders and cone tip.
       Designers studied period photographs of New York streets to determine how many extras (real and computer-generated) to include in a given scene. Several blocks of New York sets were built in Seaview, near Wellington. As none of the buildings in the set exceeded five meters, their tops were added digitally. At the height of construction, the art department employed as many as 475 to 500 people. For the interior of the Broadway theater, Jackson shot at the Civic Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand.
       As noted in The Making of King Kong, precise replicas of Curtiss Helldiver airplanes were built for the film, using drawings procured from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Aircraft consultant Gene De Marco (who also plays a pilot in the film) duplicated the plane’s instrument panels, with some actual flight instruments from the period included. For some of the shots of the S.S. Venture, Jackson refitted an actual freighter built in the 1950s. The ship’s interiors were constructed as individual sets, however, and other shots were done using miniatures.
       According to The Making of King Kong, Adrien Brody did most of his own stunt driving during the icy cab chase scene. Jackson’s children, Billy and Katie, appear in the film as “NY children,” and Jackson and fellow director Frank Darabont appear as “Gunners.” The inclusion of the directors is another homage to the original King Kong, as Cooper and Schoedsack appeared as gunners in the 1933 film. Rick Baker, who worked on the 1976 King Kong, plays a pilot. Although their appearance in the film has not been confirmed, an online source adds the following actors to the cast: Jarl Benzon, T. M. Bishop, Sandro Kopp, Todd Rippon, Nicholas Marino and Matt Panzera.
       For the 1933 King Kong, animator Willis O’Brien used different-sized, fur-covered miniatures to represent Kong onscreen. The 2005 Kong was computer generated, although Kong’s movements and facial expressions were created by the use of motion-capture techniques that utilized the body and movements of actor Andy Serkis. Serkis, who also plays sailor “Lumpy” in the film, spent eighteen months developing his Kong character, according to a 20 Dec 2005 LAT article. Serkis’ research included working for several months as a keeper to four gorillas at the London zoo. Serkis also studied mountain gorillas at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International in Rwanda prior to production.
       As noted in the LAT article, Serkis, who played “Gollum,” another motion-capture character, in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, performed scenes with Watts during principal photography, although only Naomi Watts appeared on camera. For those scenes, Serkis wore a furless, muscled gorilla suit and arm extensions to simulate a gorilla’s knuckle-dragging gait. Sometimes he was placed on cranes and ladders so that sight lines between him and Watts would make visual sense when edited. Serkis’ gorilla vocalizations were lowered electronically and amplified through a close-mike.
       After principal photography, Serkis spent another two months on the motion capture stage at Weta Digital. There Serkis performed his live-action scenes again, playing off the other actors’ footage, which was projected in front of him on hand-held monitors. To accommodate Kong’s long-armed gait, sets on the motion capture stage were built on two levels. While wearing a padded body suit, weights on his arms and legs to approximate an oversized gorilla’s larger and slower movements, fake Kong teeth and a microphone, Serkis enacted all of his on-camera shots. Attached to Serkis’ body were hundreds of electronic markers sending information about his movements to a computer-controlled camera. The computer then translated the footage into realistic 3-D animation. To capture Kong’s subtle eye and facial movements, over 130 markers were attached to Serkis’ face.
       As noted in The Making of King Kong, with the exception of one flightless bird, which was done as a puppet, dinosaurs and other Skull Island creatures were devised digitally using 3-D imaging technology. Unlike other aspects of the production, for the depiction of the dinosaurs Jackson did not demand absolute accuracy, preferring instead a more fanciful approach. The drawings of Charles Knight, an early “dinosaur artist,” inspired some of the creatures’ design. The pit scene, in which several crew members are attacked and devoured by oversized spider crabs, insects and slugs, was modeled on a scene from the 1933 King Kong that was shot but cut from the final film. One of the insects was inspired by wetas, cricket-like insects native to New Zealand (and the source of Jackson’s special effects facility’s name).
       In Oct 2005, James Newton Howard replaced Howard Shore, who had worked with Jackson on all of the Lord of the Rings films, as the film’s composer. According to a Nov 2005 DV article, Shore and Jackson parted ways due to “differing creative aspirations.” Shore, who also orchestrates and conducts his scores, averaged only eight minutes of recording per day, a pace that threatened the tight schedule. He had been recording his unfinished score for nine days when he was replaced.
       According to DV, Howard composed all of the film’s major musical themes in three days and only spent six weeks writing and recording the score. In order to meet the studio’s deadline, he used six orchestrators and three conductors to record fifteen to twenty minutes of music a day. Due to the last-minute changes, most of the recording was done on weekends and at night at three different Los Angeles sound stages.
       During filming, Jackson shot weekly production “diaries,” which he posted on a fan-based website. The diaries began on the first day of principal photography and continued through the final phase of post-production and the New York and Wellington premieres. Although behind-the-scenes “making of” documentaries are common on DVD releases, the King Kong diaries marked the first time that a director chronicled the filmmaking process on a weekly basis and made it available to the public before the picture's release. In addition to showing the technical aspects of the production, the diaries revealed Jackson’s exhaustion and seventy-pound weight loss. A day before the film’s national opening, Universal released a three-and-a-half-hour DVD of all the production diaries shot during principal photography.
       In Mar 2005, according to a Var item, Jackson invited about 200 people, including Universal executives and exhibitor representatives, to view eighteen minutes of footage from the film. Although Jackson displayed some of the film’s miniatures and explained its special effects, he required that all attendees sign confidentiality agreements and prohibited cameras and cell phones in the theater. According to an Entertainment Weekly article, in Jun 2005, Universal then launched an elaborate publicity campaign for the film, which included broadcasting a two-and-a-half minute trailer on ten of its NBC networks.
       According to an Oct 2005 DV item, Jackson’s original contract with Universal “contemplated a running time of about 2 ½ hours, with a budget around $175 million” and included a penalty for Jackson if the production went over budget. The film’s final budget was around $207 million, and its running time, three-plus hours (twice as long as the 1933 picture). Jackson agreed to pay $32 million in overages, according to the DV item, after Universal executives screened the picture and endorsed the longer running time. In addition to studio money, onscreen credits note that the picture was "filmed with the support of the financial incentives provided by the New Zealand Large Budget Screen Production Grant."
       For its 5 Dec 2005 New York world premiere, the picture was shown on thirty-eight screens, with a total of 8,000 seats in two Times Square complexes. A twenty-foot Kong replica was installed nearby. In recognition of King Kong’s place in New York cultural history, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg declared the day “King Kong Day” and gave Jackson the keys to the city.
       The picture opened nationally in 3,568 theaters, the second largest U.S. opening in Hollywood history (after Shrek II). During its Friday-Sunday opening weekend, it earned $50.1 million, the fourth-largest December box-office take. Because of the film’s big budget and intensive marketing campaign, many studio analysts described the early ticket sales as disappointing. The film’s long running time, which limited the number of possible daily screenings, was cited as the primary reason for the smaller-than-expected opening week box office. The film retained its number one status through the following Christmas weekend, however, a sign that its appeal was growing. As of 16 Jan 2006, the film's North American box office receipts totalled over $204,000,000.
       The film received mostly glowing reviews. Critic Roger Ebert called it “surprisingly involving and rather beautiful,” while the NYT reviewer gushed, “It is shameless and exalted, absurd and sublime, vulgar and grand. It’s what movies were made for.” King Kong was included on AFI’s ten Movies of the Year list for 2005 and received three Academy Awards: Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects. The film received one additional Academy Award nomination, for Art Direction. Jackson received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director, and Howard’s musical score was nominated for a Golden Globe. The picture also earned a National Board of Review Special Achievement Award for its special effects.
       According to a Nov 2005 HR item, In-Three, a company that converts traditional films into 3-D, was working on a 3-D version of King Kong. Although a Universal spokesman denied that the picture would be converted to 3-D, the HR item speculated that a 3-D version would likely be shown in theaters “several months into the movie’s run.”
       In 1976, Universal released its first remake of the 1933 picture, also titled King Kong. That version, produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by Jack Guillerman, starred Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange. De Laurentiis produced a sequel to the 1976 remake in 1986, titled King Kong Lives. To coincide with Jackson's remake’s release, in Dec 2005 Warner Bros. released a special edition DVD version of the 1933 King Kong. The DVD contains a 159-minute documentary about the original, which Jackson supervised. The documentary includes a Weta-produced reconstruction of the lost spider-pit scene and re-created models and scenery. For more information on films featuring King Kong and King Kong’s cultural legacy, See Entry for the 1933 King Kong.