NZ's turn to go bananas over 'King Kong'

Director Peter Jackson (2nd right) and the leading cast of King Kong with Mongolian sumo grand champion Asashoryu (3rd left) at the film's premiere in Tokyo. Picture / Reuters

It is New Zealand's turn to go bananas over King Kong when Peter Jackson's blockbuster film has its premiere in Wellington tomorrow.

Thousands of people are expected to pack Courtenay Place for the red carpet screening -- the biggest film event in the capital since the final instalment of The Lord of the Rings had its world premiere in December 2003.

Jackson, partner Fran Walsh, co-producer Philippa Boyens, the Weta wizards and crews, and most of the film's stars and New Zealand celebrities will walk the 200m red carpet to the Embassy Theatre.

Grandstands will be erected to cater for some of the thousands of spectators expected to pour into the city for the event.

There will be road closures and public transport will be diverted.

Kong stars Australian actress Naomi Watts as the beauty who tames the beast, and Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Kyle Chandler, Colin Hanks, Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis.

Serkis, who plays the giant gorilla Kong, played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Jack Black, who plays the unscrupulous filmmaker Carl Denham, will be absent from tomorrow's premiere, as will several other cast members.

Prime Minister Helen Clark attended the last Rings premiere, but this time she will be in Kuala Lumpur for the East Asia summit.

The $292 million, three-hour epic had its star-studded world premiere in New York on December 5.

New York City went all out for the event, with 8000 people attending the premiere. King Kong was shown simultaneously on 38 screens in theatres near Times Square.

December 5 was proclaimed King Kong Day by the mayor of New York, and even included the drawing of a special US$55 million ($79.15 million) state lottery named after the movie.

Triple Oscar winner Jackson and his Kong-sized team then went on to premieres in London, Berlin and Japan.

The New Zealand premiere will be the last, on the same day that the movie starts screening publicly in the United States.

Reviews have labelled Jackson's achievement of a childhood dream as a "slam-dunk box office hit".

The movie's special effects have already been tipped for Academy Award nominations.

The film was made entirely in New Zealand, even though half of the movie was set in New York.

After the Rings trilogy, Jackson's company in Miramar expanded for the massive job of remaking the 1933 classic movie that is one of America's most popular icons.

The Academy Award winners did a bit of empire building themselves.

As Kong developed, the filmmakers eventually needed their own substation to stop their 5000 computers draining the local energy supply from domestic consumers.

Weta Workshop chief and Oscar winner Richard Taylor said last week the extraordinary attention to detail sometimes had the Weta team labelled as fanatical.

He said it was not about being fanatical, but about the need to build a tangible world for sophisticated movie-going audiences at a level that did justice to the story.

Weta Digital recreated New York of the 1930s on computer, using old photographs as a reference point.

It was not considered feasible to shoot the movie in New York, as the city's architecture had changed so much over the past 72 years.

Weta recreated 90,000 buildings, including the Empire State Building, with over 60,000 of them in intricate detail down to the doorknobs and window ledges.

Production designer Grant Major, who won an Academy Award for the third Rings movie, created key aspects of central Manhattan, including Times Square and Herald Square, on a lot at Seaview, in the Hutt Valley.

Vintage cars were sought from all over New Zealand to create the bustling traffic.

Weta Workshop created the special makeup, creatures, weapons and King Kong's home of Skull Island, with vast miniature sets using 25,000 tiny New Zealand native ferns.

The costume of King Kong took a year to make, hair by hair.

About 700 artists worked on the film, together with an army of set dressers, painters, carpenters, greensmen, builders and engineers.

Jackson is director, co-producer and co-writer of Kong.

Oscar-winning Philippa Boyens and Jackson's partner Fran Walsh were the other co-writers of the screenplay.

Boyens said in New York there had been a great deal of "feminine input" into character development.

There had been a great response to the movie from women so far, she said.

Cinematographer for Kong was Academy Ward winner Andrew Lesnie, who gave the look of New York a soft vintage glow that wowed the audiences in Manhattan last week.

- NZPA