Peter Jackson
Image taken from gearfuse.com
Peter Jackson is one of the most famous directors of today. His work with Lord of the Rings has managed to reinvent the New Zealand film industry and change the process of film making. These three films have made him a millionaire and one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood. But how did a young awkward New Zealand boy go from being a small-town independent filmmaker to the director of one of the most ambitious film projects in history?
Peter Jackson grew up in a small town in New Zealand. From an early age, he showed interest in cameras. He would make small movies using his father’s Super8 camera. At the age of 9, he saw King Kong on television and it changed his life forever. He began making movies almost every weekend. A short film entitled Bad Taste, eventually consumed his life and turned into his first feature film. It was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and Jackson was soon able to became a true movie director. For the next few weeks he made more small budget films until 1994, when his first Oscar nomination occurred. This was for his film Heavenly Creatures, which told the story of one of New Zealands’s infamous murder stories.
With an Oscar nomination and critical acclaim, Jackson made his first big-budget film called The Frighteners. The film was produced by Robert Zemeckis and starred Michael J. Fox. It was not a success, but did show that Jackson had the ability to create a film worth viewing. His company soon earned the rights to the famous fantasy novels The Lord of the Rings. For the next several years, he threw his life into these films and by 2003, he had earned many nominations. He had created the current most beloved fantasy film of all time.
