Re-creating King Kong will fulfill childhood dream says Jackson

Peter Jackson says re-creating the 1930s classic King Kong will enable him to live out a teenage dream.

"When I was about 13 years old I had this grandiose idea of making King Kong...my ideas were always way more than what I could accomplish," he told journalists at his Miramar Studios in Wellington today.

With his early attempt, Jackson got as far building a cardboard model of the Empire State Building, making a rubber model of King Kong and painting the set of the New York skyline on one of his mother's sheets.

"This is all a chance to relive my childhood, which is a big thrill for me."

Jackson said the original King Kong film - which featured 1930s star Fay Wray playing the heroine Ann Darrow -- inspired him to become a film-maker.

"It captured a feeling of fantasy and adventure and mystery. It represented the magic of what films could be and what I loved about films."

To be able to remake King Kong was a "dream come true".

Jackson's first attempt at filming King Kong was to film it on an 8mm home movie camera.

Today, his preference for doing things "the old fashioned way" has been maintained, as the latest version of the movie will be shot on 35mm, rather than digitally recorded with computer graphics.

"We felt that in order to make that shift (to digital) it would pressure us too much at a time when we had a lot of other pressures on us to get the film prepared"

"We explored all the latest technologies, but we were just a bit too late and we felt that it would just take our eye off the ball to introduce this technology."

- NZPA