Filmonic » The Lovely Bones

Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones needed “more violence and suffering”

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:09:23 +0000

You would have thought The Lovely Bones, which tells the story of a raped and murdered 14-year-old girl named Susie who watches over her family as they mourn and try to find her killer, would have the ‘violence’ and ’suffering’ boxes well and truly ticked. However, according to Reuters early test screening showed that people were not satisfied, and wanted more.

Possible spoilers:

Jackson told Reuters he was taken aback to find that in early screenings audiences “were simply not satisfied” with a scene of one character’s death. “They wanted far more violence,” Jackson said, so the “Lord of the Rings” director went back to the editing room to “basically add more violence and suffering.”
Yet, with a higher level of violence, it may have earned an “R” rating, meaning it would be seen mostly by adults. So, when shooting one death scene of a man falling to his death, Jackson chose to simply have him disappear off the edge of a cliff and not show the gruesome details of his fall. “We got a lot of people telling us that they were disappointed with this death scene, as they wanted him to see (the character) in agony and suffer a lot more,” he said. “They just weren’t satisfied.”
Jackson said he and his filmmakers were perplexed because they had already shot much of the movie. They had to go back to the editing room and use digital effects to add shots where (the character) bounces against the cliff on the way down. “We had to create a whole suffering death scene just to give people the satisfaction they needed,” he said.

So if you see The Lovely Bones next January (or February if you’re in the UK) and you witness a character bouncing off a cliff, you’ll know it’s because some people (with possible mental conditions) wanted it.

New poster for The Lovely Bones

Liam — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:32:58 +0000

Yahoo! got themselves a new poster for Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. The film tells the story of a young girl, Susie Salmon, who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven.

The Lovely Bones will be released on January 15th in the US and January 29th in the UK. We would have already seen The Lovely Bones by now if Paramount didn’t push it back. The studio thinks the film is Oscar bait, which I think it might be. It is Peter Jackson afterall.

Here’s the trailer:

Peter Jackson talks Lovely Bones, Tintin and The Hobbit

Liam — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:32:37 +0000

The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson recently spoke to Stuff.co.nz about his upcoming projects, one of which is The Lovely Bones which we would have already seen by now if Paramount didn’t push it back to December. The studio think the film, which centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven, is Oscar bait.

“When we showed them the cut late last year, they decided to delay the release until December to plop it into the “awards season”, which is a nice vote of confidence in the movie,” Jackson said. The delay meant he had more time to work on the final cut and spend more time on visual effects. He wished he had had the same luxury with his last film, King Kong. “I wish we had this time on King Kong, which we badly wanted to reduce by 20 minutes, but we ran out of time before figuring out how to do it,” he said.

He also spoke about The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn and The Hobbit which will both be released in December 2011. I know Jackson has a thing for December release dates (Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong, The Lovely Bones) but having two of his films competing against each other isn’t a good idea.

Jackson said while Steven Spielberg directed the first Tintin film in Los Angeles, he was helping “beef up” some of the chase scenes and was working on post production at Weta Digital in Wellington.
Jackson said he would start work as the director of the second Tintin film about a year from now. He and Spielberg were also still open to co-directing the third Tintin film, he said.
Jackson is an executive producer and co-writer of The Hobbit. He said shooting was scheduled to begin in March next year. Despite rumours, the two-part film, directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro, would not be 3D.

Peter Jackson will have a busy year next year and I can imagine he will be hopping between The Hobbit and Tintin sets. We knew The Hobbit would start filming sometime next year, so it’s good to know they have a month in sight. Guillermo del Toro and the gang have around 8 months to decide who in Middle Earth will play Bilbo Baggins and the rest of the characters.