According to various contemporary sources, including a 5 Nov 1975 LAT article, the screen rights to remake RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.’s King Kong (1933, see entry) were contested between producer Dino De Laurentiis and Universal Pictures. Universal sought the property as an opportunity to showcase its new sound system technology, Sensurround, which debuted with the 1974 release Earthquake (see entry), and the studio had begun negotiating remake rights with RKO General, the successor to RKO Radio Pictures. Around the same time, however, De Laurentiis signed a $200,000 deal with RKO General and announced his production in May 1975. Universal responded by filing a $25 million lawsuit against De Laurentiis and RKO General, but by early Nov 1975, a trial date had not yet been set, and the De Laurentiis production was moving ahead with a reported $10-$12 million budget, a first draft of the script completed by Lorenzo Semple, Jr., and casting scheduled to begin Dec 1975. Universal, which was in also in preproduction on the remake at the time with Hunt Stromberg, Jr., as producer and Joe Sargent directing, made a second attempt to defend its legal rights to King Kong with a federal district court lawsuit that argued the story’s “basic ingredients” were public domain. According to LAT, Universal sought to differentiate Edgar Wallace’s original serial and Delos W. Lovelace’s novelization from the 1933 King Kong screenplay. Later that month, on 19 Nov 1975, RKO General filed a $5 million counter-claim against Universal for copyright infringement, as announced in the 21 Nov 1975 Var. By that time, Universal had titled its production The Legend of King Kong and had established a 5 Jan 1976 start date for principal photography, confident that the film was exempt from RKO copyright because it was based on the Lovelace novel, not the RKO motion picture. However, RKO General sought an injunction against Universal’s production, fearing that a second King Kong release would violate its deal with De Laurentiis.
       Meanwhile, De Laurentiis had negotiated domestic distribution rights with Paramount Pictures, Corp., and John Guillermin had been hired to direct, though there was no set start date for principal photography. On 15 Dec 1975, DV announced an additional lawsuit, this time filed by De Laurentiis against Universal with charges of copyright infringement and “unfair competition.” The complaint, issued 4 Dec 1975, sought an injunction against Universal “from interfering with the De Laurentiis production,” and $90 million in damages. However, a 29 Jan 1976 DV news item reported that De Laurentiis and Universal had ended their litigations, agreeing that De Laurentiis’ Paramount release would open eighteen months earlier than Universal’s version. Several months later, a 22 Mar 1976 LAHExam article noted information about the settlement that was previously unpublicized, reporting that De Laurentiis had agreed to give Universal’s parent company, MCA, Inc., a “significant participation in the gross receipts” of his production.
       Universal maintained its original legal battle against RKO General, and a 5 Mar 1976 DV column announced that Los Angeles Superior Court Justice Harry Hupp threw the case out of court, ruling that Universal held no legal claims to the picture. However, Universal had Hupp's ruling reversed by the District Court of Appeals. A news item in the 13 Jan 1978 Box reported that the California Supreme Court had declined RKO's request to review the reversal and had sent the case back to Superior Court for trial. Although DV suspected that a Universal remake of King Kong would never materialize, the studio released Peter Jackson’s King Kong two decades later (2005, see entry).
       In March 1976, RKO filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against an independent Denver, CO, motion picture company, Key International Film Distributors, which was producing a film titled The New King Kong in Europe with a $1.4 million budget. According to the 7 Apr 1976 LAT, RKO charged Key International with copyright infringement and attempts to “confuse the public,” representing The New King Kong as related to the 1933 film. On 28 Aug 1976, the Lodi, CA, News-Sentinel reported a ruling on the case that stipulated Key International was not authorized by RKO to use the Kong story, and that RKO owned the copyright for King Kong and “all variants on the title.”    
       According to a 1 Dec 1975 New York article, producer Roger Corman was also planning a King Kong remake at the time of the legal battles, but he opted to shelve the project.
       Despite copyright disputes, De Laurentiis’ pre-production was underway in late 1975. At the beginning of Nov 1975, several contemporary sources, including the 12 Nov 1975 DV, reported complaints from African American actors, who were called to the producer’s Los Angeles, CA, office and asked to perform the characteristics of a gorilla in a casting call for the title role. A 17 Nov 1975 LAT news item noted that Barbra Streisand was De Laurentiis’ first choice for the female lead character, “Dwan,” and the 9 Dec 1975 LAHExam stated that Elaine Joyce was under consideration. The role eventually went to Jessica Lange.
       According to a Paramount Pictures press release in AMPAS library production files, King Kong was filmed over eight months in locations including Los Angeles, New York City, and Hawaii. Principal photography was initially scheduled to begin 15 Apr 1976, but due to competition from Universal, De Laurentiis pushed the production start date forward four months, to begin on 5 Jan 1976, even though the sets were not yet constructed and the forty-foot mechanical “King Kong” had not been fabricated. By the time of the Superior Court's initial ruling against Universal, the production was already well into filming and headed to Hawaii. De Laurentiis estimated that the contest with Universal cost the production up to $4 million.
       A 1 Mar 1976 Box news item confirmed that principal photography was moving from Paramount studios in Los Angeles to “the northern coast of Kauai” at that time, and the 8 Mar 1976 Box specified the location of Kalalau Valley, otherwise known as Honopū Valley. The 18 Mar 1976 HR announced that the production had returned to Los Angeles from Hawaii for additional filming, and college football All-American Scott Lewis had been cast in a “major feature role.” However, Lewis is not credited onscreen. According to the 1 Mar 1976 Box, a second unit was already in New York City during the Hawaii shoot, preparing for the film’s climactic World Trade Center finale. A 2 Jun 1976 Var news item listed a casting call for the approximately 5,000 background actors required for the scene, and the 9 Jun 1976 HR reported that New York City filming was set to begin 14 Jun 1976 on a three week schedule. Principal photography was scheduled to resume in Los Angeles on 6 Jul 1976. As noted in HR, the film’s mechanical “Kong” weighed over six tons, and was too large to be hoisted on the top of the World Trade Center. Therefore, a forty-foot non-mechanical, styrofoam model was used as a replacement. A 23 Jun 1976 Detroit, MI, Free Press article noted that the World Trade Center sequence was filmed twice, for a total cost of nearly $250,000, and an Aug 1976 edition of Cinemaphile noted that the throng of approximately 45,000 background personnel marked the largest crowd scene in motion picture history to date. On 20 Aug 1976, HR stated that the U.S. Department of Labor had initiated an investigation into the ethics of using so many unpaid extras. The outcome of the case remains undetermined.
       Although the 26 Aug 1976 HR announced that principal photography was set to end the following day, the 6 Sep 1976 Box reported that production concluded four days behind schedule, on 31 Aug 1976, with a budget that increased from $6.7 to $23.7 million in eight months. A 1 Sep 1976 HR news item noted that the Kong Kong set at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios was picketed on 31 Aug 1976 by teamster studio transportation drivers, who were demanding payment of a $7,000 claim against the production’s special effects unit.
       According to the 15 Dec 1976 Var review, the character of King Kong was portrayed by an uncredited costumed actor, Rick Baker, as well as the forty-foot robotic gorilla. As stated in Paramount publicity materials found in AMPAS library files, initial designs for the mechanical Kong were conceived by special effects artists Glen Robinson and Carlo Rambaldi, although Rambaldi is not credited onscreen. The men intended Kong to be constructed by an aircraft company, but due to the rushed start of principal photography, the filmmakers opted to build Kong on “a Hollywood backlot” starting Jan 1976. The completed 6.5-ton model was structured by an aluminum skeleton that contained “3,100 feet of hydraulic hose and 4,500 feet of electrical wiring.” Its chest measured twenty feet in width, with an arm span of the same distance. The machine could walk, turn at its waist, and move its arms in sixteen unique positions with the operation of hydraulic valves that were controlled by six men. A 25 Oct 1976 Time news item added that the hands alone were six feet across and the arms weighed 1,650 pounds each. The arms were constructed separately from the rest of the Kong model, then suspended from a crane, so actress Jessica Lange could be lifted thirty to forty feet. Publicity materials noted that safety features were installed in Kong’s fingers so they were not able to close around Lange entirely. Michael Dino, a famous wigmaker and the hair designer for Kong, created the gorilla’s fur with 4,000 pounds of horse tails, imported from Argentina. One hundred assistants weaved the horsehair into four types of netting, and the work took months. The hair panels were then attached to pieces of latex that were, in turn, glued onto the model’s metal frame. A 22 Jan 1976 UCLA Daily Bruin article reported that the mechanical Kong cost $2 million.

      End credits begin with the following title card: "The producer wishes to acknowledge that Kong has been designed and engineered by Carlo Rambaldi, constructed by Carlo Rambaldi and Glen Robinson, with special contributions by Rick Baker."