Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings moviemaker Peter Jackson has put his own money into a screen version of the bestselling novel The Lovely Bones, the industry press said this week.
Jackson, along with his wife and filmmaking partner Fran Walsh, have optioned the rights to Alice Sebold’s book under an unusual deal that will exclude studio financing, easing corporate pressure on them, according to Daily Variety.
“We’ve woken up every single morning for the past six years with people at studios awaiting a script or a cut of a film,” Jackson said, explaining that he and Walsh wanted to be free of the enormous studio pressure they lived under during the making of Rings.
“We want time to discover what this film is,” said the moviemaker, who is working on a long-delayed remake of King Kong.
He will begin working on Bones after he has completed King Kong.
Jackson won the best director’s Academy Award last year for the final film of his Rings trilogy.
The New Zealander bought the rights for an undisclosed sum from FilmFour, the movie arm of British broadcaster Channel 4, which will work with Jackson and Walsh on the Bones film.
Jackson, Walsh and their Lord of the Rings writing partner Philippa Boyens will begin adapting the book in January. The release of the movie will likely be in the last quarter of 2007, Variety said.
“It’s the best kind of fantasy in that it has a lot to say about the real world,” Jackson said.
“You have an experience when you read the book that is unlike any other. I don’t want the tone or the mood to be different or lost in the film,” he toSapa-AFPld Variety. —