User:Wildroot/King Kong

Cast
When his remake of the film was first mooted for production in the late 1996, Fay Wray was reputedly asked to give a on-line cameo at the end of the film. Utter Denham's final line. "It was beauty killed the beast." She declined. "Kong was always an independent kind of guy and I think he should stay that way. I think it is excellent and honorable that Peter Jackson wanted to be true to the original."

Development

 * When Jack Black's film producer Carl Denham learns that RKO hired an actress (named "Fay," as in original Kong star Wray) away from him, he gripes, "Cooper — I should have known." Merian C. Cooper, the co-director of the first Kong, was the head of RKO studios before and after World War II. The cheesy movie dialogue spoken by actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and leading man Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler) during a scene being shot aboard the Venture is actual cheesy movie dialogue from the first Kong. After breaking the jaw of a V. rex (a relative of the T. rex), Kong flops it open and shut, just like he does in the 1933 version. Several original Kong props from Jackson's collection can be found around the ship, including a native shield and spears mounted on the wall. An advertising sign for Universal Pictures, the studio behind this version of Kong, can be spied in Times Square. Archival photos of New York City, circa 1933, showed a promo for Columbia Pictures in that spot. "We did try to make it Columbia," Jackson says. "They wanted to be paid a huge amount of money. So we went with Universal," which let him use a sign for free.

Filming

 * Serkis: "We created this sound system, the 'Kongalyzer,' that dropped my pitch by a couple of octaves. After a couple of days, Naomi and I managed to emotionally connect."

Visual effects
Jackson saw King Kong as opportunity for technical innovations in motion capture, commissioning Christian Rivers of Weta Digital to supervise all aspects of Kong's performance. Serkis was cast in the title role in April 2003 and prepared himself by working with gorillas at the London Zoo. He then traveled to Rwanda, observing the actions and behaviors of gorillas in the wild. Rivers explained that the detailed facial performance capture with Serkis was accomplished because of the similarities between human and gorilla faces. "Gorillas have such a similar looking set of eyes and brows, you can look at those expressions and transpose your own interpretation onto them." Photos of silverback gorillas were also superimposed on Kong's image in the early stages of animation. Serkis had to go through two hours of motion capture makeup every day, having 135 small markers attached to different spots on his face. Following principal photography, Serkis had to spend an two months on a motion-capture stage, miming Kong's movements for the film's digital animators.


 * Displaying some of the miniatures, he explained how he told his tech crew the miniature forest had to show the effect of wind rippling the branches and leaves as the big ape lumbers through it -- apparently a feat never pulled off before.


 * Skull Island-paintings of Gustav Dove. NYC-real authenticity.


 * For authenticity, original drawings for WWI biplanes were used to build two full-size, earthbound replicas. (Smashups and tricky flying shots were accomplished with CG.) Actors were photographed on sets draped with green fabric backing. The green areas were then replaced with CG-rendered "set extensions" and matching miniatures. (Since using bluescreens can yield rougher edges, it's often a second choice.) Digital stunt doubles. dinosaurs eyeball their prey as the T. rex did in Jurassic Park. There's a final-act dash of Walt Disney in the Bambi-esque spectacle of Kong sliding on a frozen pond. But the most overt shout-outs go to the original Kong. The opening credits have the same deco background, verbatim dialogue often pops up, and Kong caps a rumble with a predator exactly the way animator Willis O'Brien staged it: He toys with the dead beast's broken jaw. Juggling: Ann Darrow's flashiest trick to placate Kong. Because Watts is not exactly Ringling Bros. material, she moved her empty hands and CG artists tossed in the rocks. Case in point: the Universal billboard visible in Times Square shots. According to visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, a Columbia Pictures sign loomed over the real square in 1933. But Columbia apparently refused to give permission to use its logo without being paid, so the CG crew inserted a Universal sign. Long movie, stressed schedule for Weta: The last two CG shots finished — one of which is Kong starting to scale the Empire State Building — didn't wrap till the morning of Nov. 28, just two days before the first press screening. The twinkly accompaniment to Kong's tender interlude with Ann on an icy pond in Central Park. The sequence was one of the last Watts filmed, and grew out of an improv idea by Andy Serkis about how Kong would find it tough walking on snowy city streets.


 * Expand the New York City skylines with CGI, pedestrians, cars. Filming on-location in NYC would have been difficult and costly. Changed too much since the 1930s. Another alternate was to use the standing NYC set on the Universal backlot, but Jackson decided the set was small, narrow and had short streets. The Mountain Gorilla. Researched the work of Dian Fossey. Tim Burtonesque and Fanghorn gone mad. As soon as it was announced in March - concept art. Skull Island- studio sets combined with rear projections, backgrounds created using matte paintings and with miniatures in the foreground.


 * Skull Island, Kong's jungly home, was created almost entirely in miniatures; there are twice as many miniatures shots in Kong as in all three Rings films combined.


 * The production team worked from original building plans, and visited the Empire State Building eight times over several years to photograph it, as well as the vista from its summit. The filmmakers then digitally contrasted the new images with 1930's pictures of the building and aerial panoramas of the urban jungle of the city, "and stripped out all the post-1933 features," including the modern antenna mast, Mr. Letteri said.


 * After seeing a version of the film in late September at Mr. Jackson's studio in New Zealand, Universal executives agreed to release King Kong at a length of three hours. Total artistic control. The $32 million went for effects shots.

Music

 * 108-piece. Two hours, 48 minutes of music. James Newton Howard eplaced Howard Shore. Shore -- whose cameo as the pit-band conductor during Kong's New York theater appearance survives the cut -- won three Oscars for his music for "Kong" director Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" movies. The last-minute change stunned the film-music community because of Shore's close collaboration with Jackson over nearly four years of work on the trilogy. Jackson's only public comment came in an Oct. 14 statement: "During the last few weeks, Howard and I came to realize that we had differing creative aspirations." Sources say Shore recorded his unfinished "Kong" score for nine days (three in Berlin, six in Wellington with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra). Unlike most film composers, Shore orchestrates and conducts his music. He averaged eight minutes of recording per day on the "Kong" score, none of which will be used. Howard began recording Oct. 29, about two weeks after he was hired, and utilized six orchestrators and three conductors in order to record the necessary 15-20 minutes a day to finish on time. Recording sessions took place at L.A.'s three biggest stages, Sony, Fox and Todd-AO, and involved a 40-voice choir as well as separate sessions for percussion, ethnic instruments and solo voice. The move of the "Kong" sessions from New Zealand to California has proved a bonanza for L.A. musicians, although it was a scheduling nightmare. With most scoring stages already booked for much of November, Howard's score was recorded mostly on weekends, using whatever large stage was available on short notice. Howard composed all of the major themes in just three days, and has never met the director in person. They communicated solely by phone and video conferencing. Jackson, A famous fan of the 1933 "Kong," also asked for occasional musical nods to Max Steiner's classic score for the original. None of the team currently working on the film heard any of Shore's "Kong" music. But observers agree that the Howard score, although being written and recorded on a breakneck schedule of less than six weeks (he had about the same time to rush through a score for "Waterworld" in 1995 and that was only two hours of music), is alternately thrilling and tender. On less pressured assignments, Howard usually writes two minutes of music per day. On "Kong," the average was five or more. He confessed, on one of Jackson's authorized video "post-production diaries" for the Internet, that he has never worked this hard on a score.


 * Al Jolson's recording of "I'm Sitting on Top of the World" was played during the opening montage of 1930's New York City. Shore left 2 months before the release of the film due to artistic differences between Jackson.


 * Shore was replaced by James Newton Howard in mid-October 2005.


 * Creative differences between Jackson and Shore started in early October 2005. James Newton Howard took over in mid-October. Collaborated with on Rings trilogy.

Release

 * August 2005: Universal, aiming to protect filmdom's mightiest gorilla, is watermarking and encrypting copies of King Kong. It is also supervising access to the film during all phases of its production, monitoring online any machinations involving the movie and planning to guard advance screenings.

Universal lost an opportunity to capitalize on a "Kong" revenue stream when an anticipated deal to release the film on Imax screens in December, at the same time the movie would appear in regular theaters, failed to materialize, and Imax chose to show Warner Brothers' new "Harry Potter" film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. "We think 'King Kong' will be a big movie," Richard L. Gelfond, co-chairman of Imax, said, "but unfortunately we could not agree on deal terms, including the box-office split."


 * Premiere at the Loews Cineplex Entertainment and the AMC Empire Theater. One large room was decorated to look like Skull Island, with bird sounds, hanging vines and fog. It was followed by row upon row of buffet tables flanked by artifacts of the 1930's: old-fashioned Chinese parlors, general stores, burlesque stages, peanut vendors, people selling and even reading newspapers.


 * December 5th premiere at New York. The gala featured a 20-foot replica gorilla, a closed-off 42nd Street at rush hour, and a riverfront after-party teeming with jungle foliage, canine vaudeville shows, shoeshine boys. George Lucas attended. Time Square multiplexes.

Marketing

 * Marketing: Use that stuff. Jackson began sending them video-blog entries every few days--46 in all so far.




 * TheOneRing.net fansite launched a companion site, KongisKing.net. Production diaries.


 * Promoted at July 2005 Comic Con.


 * Began on September 8, 2004.


 * In an attempt to cash in on Peter Jackson's remake of "King Kong," the History Channel, in which NBC has a 25% stake, will air its latest special, "Giganto: The Real King Kong," on December 15. Program, which will explore the existence of a real King Kong, airs the day after Jackson's remake hits theaters nationwide. Gigantopithecus. Special will  feature interviews with anthropologists and employ modern science and technology to probe the mystery of a giant ape named Giganto Pithecus, known to exist between 40,000 and 400,000 years ago, and determine if a present-day descendant still roams the Earth.  Anthropology, forensic testing, body reconstruction and 3-D animation are all utilized.


 * Kong doesn't open until Dec. 14, but already an effects-heavy preview has become omnipresent in theaters, on television, and on the Internet. There's also an unfolding behind-the-scenes production diary available online that's already long enough to fill a DVD's special-edition supplement — which of course upstages the eventual DVD. This unorthodox and massive machine rumbled to life at 8:59 p.m. on Monday, June 27. That's when 10 NBC Universal networks showed a first-look trailer lasting two and a half minutes. (Similar TV blitzkriegs happened in the U.K., Germany, Japan, France, and Peter Jackson's native land, New Zealand.) Two days later, the same trailer fanned out to theaters around the world with 17,000-plus prints of Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds — thousands more than a typical opening-weekend launch. Given that the movie still has more than 1,000 visual-effects shots to be finalized, and that live-action shooting only wrapped in mid-April, crafting so revealing a preview this early carries enormous risk. Diaries - starting way back in September 2004. He then began releasing chunks of it to the fan website KongisKing.net, which is not subsidized by Universal. including comical segments in which Jackson is pictured as so exhausted, he has to bring in guest directors Bryan Singer (who's been in Australia working on Superman Returns) and Frank Darabont. (The jury may still be very out on the actual promotional benefit of all this early leaking, but that hasn't stopped Singer and Warner Bros. from echoing Jackson's approach on their own blog outlet, BlueTights.net, which started up this spring.


 * Warner Home Video released a two-disc special edition version of the 1933 film on November 22, 2005. Peter Jackson assisted on some of the bonus featurettes and making-of documentaries. It was also the debut of The Son of Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949). Jackson approached Warner Bros. about helping out with the DVD release of the 1933 original in February 2004.


 * http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BMSUJK


 * Matthew Costello's prequel novel. Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books in November 2005. World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, published by Simon & Schuster, hits bookshelves on November 15th.

Critical response
King Kong also received universal critical acclaim. Based on 235 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, 84% of the critics enjoyed the film with an average rating of 7.7/10. King Kong was more balanced with the 38 critics in Rotten Tomatoes' "Top Critics" poll, receiving a 76% approval rating and a 7.6/10 score. By comparison, Metacritic calculated an 89/100 score based on 39 reviews.


 * 4 positive
 * 1 negative

Box office

 * Broke opening day records in China.


 * Had competition with the first Narnia movie and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.


 * 52nd highest grossing at time of release. Released in the United States on December 14, 2005 in 3,568 theaters. $207 million production budget. $218,080,025 in the US, $332,437,332 foreign, $550,517,357 worldwide total. Fifth-highest in domestic totals for 2005. As well as worldwide.


 * The Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China disputed with the use of violence.

Home video

 * http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JO20
 * http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000E97Y6K
 * http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000H30B2C
 * Blu-ray


 * Senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri estimates that more than 300 completed CG shots were scrapped as the story line expanded in some spots and shrank in others. (No wonder the budget reportedly topped $207 million.) According to Jackson, extra scenes "might end up in the DVD, if Universal wanted to do it." Among the scrapped bits, some fragments of which appeared in the trailers: Movie director Carl Denham (Jack Black) films Ann Darrow screaming on Skull Island's rocky shore, A Skull Island rescue party traveling on a makeshift raft is attacked by a Piranhadon, then set upon by what Jackson calls a particularly vicious dinosaur, as in the original Kong, Ann sings When You're Smiling to Kong. Probably omitted, says Watts, because of my sketchy singing abilities. I'm virtually tone-deaf, More of writer Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) goading and fleeing an escaped Kong on Manhattan's wintry streets, Ann gets pulled away from Kong in New York during the military's attack, and is held back by soldiers as Kong goes berserk.


 * 'King Kong will see a belated Blu-ray release on January 20 in a special edition chock full of upgraded specs and bonus features. Boasting both the theatrical and extended cuts of the film available via seamless branching (the HD DVD only included the theatrical version). Extras carried over to the Blu-ray will see only a single audio commentary with Jackson and screenwriter/producer Philip Boyen (on the extended version only). High-def exclusives include U-Control picture-in-picture on the extended cut.


 * Achieved over $140 million in DVD sales.

[The camera] "Luckily, Pete is a collector of many old, cool artifacts of Hollywood lore, and he had one of the cameras that they used to film some of King Kong with. And me and Colin [Hanks] and the other people who were on the film-within-the-film crew learned how to make movies with it and load it and shoot. We actually shot some really dumb movies on it in preparation. I think they might be on the DVD extras. They'd better be, because we put a lot of thought into those turdy little movies. One of them was called The Chase." Buster Keaton-type."

Accolades

 * http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360717/awards (5)

Future

 * 3D
 * Jackson was also seen shooting with a 3-D camera at times during the shoot of King Kong.


 * Peter Jackson plans at some stage to re-release King Kong in 3D.




 * http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006506