Jackson's Kong believable say experts

A gorilla expert has said Jackson's Kong looks authentic.

With the red carpet world premiere only 24 hours away in New York, expectations for Peter Jackson's King Kong are as high as the Empire State Building.

The beloved 1933 classic, revered by American movie fans, is now a three-hour $292 million epic made in New Zealand.

Universal Pictures is spending about US$40 ($57.44) million marketing the film, making it one of the largest amounts ever for a Hollywood blockbuster.

Media interest in the film is intense, with hundreds of international journalists in New York jostling for interviews with Jackson and his Weta crew.

Early reviews hail the movie as Oscar material, as it seamlessly combines adventure, emotional depth, fantasy and action.

Interest is fever pitch in snowy New York where trailers for the movie blaze across a giant screen in Times Square and there is even a US$15 million lottery with the Kong's face printed on each ticket.

Gorilla expert Dan Wharton, director of the prestigious Bronx Zoo, saw a preview screening yesterday and said Jackson's gorilla looked entirely authentic.

"Jackson has achieved the impossible," he said.

It is a movie which has always resonated with New Yorkers. Jackson said today he wanted to be true to the original, which he had loved since childhood, which was why he has set his version in 1933, the same year as the original was made.

New Yorkers of any age know their key landmarks - such as the Empire State Building - and they will know instantly if there is even a brick out of place in Jackson's kiwi recreation.

King Kong was first released when the Great Depression had rendered millions people jobless and ordinary folks looked for any cheap entertainment to forget their woes.

The beauty-taming-the-beast story resonated with the public. In keeping with the times, the movie's heroine Ann Darrow, was an unemployed actress on the streets of New York, struggling to survive the Depression.

The image of the giant ape scaling the Empire State Building is one of the most memorable in cinema history.

One of Jackson's biggest challenges for his King Kong was taking the advanced computer technology developed for The Lord of the Rings, to recreate an entirely authentic New York set in the 1930s.

It was impossible to transform modern New York, as it has changed so much over the past 72 years.

But it had to look real. Existing aerial and ground-view photographs from the period provided key reference for artists.

These shots were then cross-referenced with digital data of present-day New York.

Any buildings built post-1933 were stripped out, leaving many thousands of buildings to be replaced with data correct for 1933.

The Weta wizards created over 90,000 buildings, with more than 60,000 of them correct down to the last detail of doorknobs and window ledges.

The making of King Kong required enormous technological resources.

Weta's Richard Taylor said today that more than 5000 computers were used, and in the end the filmmaking company had to have its own substation because it drained so much power off the local supply to Miramar consumers.

Jackson researched gorilla behaviour, because he knew his Kong had to be real "or the movie would just look bad."

Actor Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, once more used his skills in playing a mesmerising fantasy character with Kong.

But he knew that this character had to be grounded in reality. He went to Rwanda to see gorillas first-hand in their natural habitat.

Serkis said today he was relieved to know his portrayal and the meticulous work of the Weta Digital and Weta Workshop crews had resulted in a believable Kong.

"This is great news," he said when told the zoo director had seen the film and given it the thumbs up. Jackson also gave a laugh of relief.

Of tomorrow's premiere, Jackson said he was also relieved it was finally almost here.

It had been a long time coming. This was a childhood dream finally realised, he said.

- NZPA