I am a big fan of Peter Jackson . I am not as rapturous about The Lord of the Rings as are some people (although I love Heavenly Creatures )., but I think there is something very right about a world in which a semi-mad New Zealander can start out making splatter movies on the weekend in which he films his friends waving axes at one another and covering them with tomato sauce and somehow go from there to being given $270 million of Hollywood's money to make a Tolkien trilogy. And getting to make the movie at home in New Zealand too.

I have been waiting to see what Jackson was planning on doing after he had finished LOTR, and this little article is about the first I have seen about it. It's interesting that he might consider making The Hobbit as well. Certainly Hollywood would like this, as it would mean that they would get four immensely profitable Middle Earth films instead of three. However, I will believe it when I see it, as I imagine that getting the rights from Saul Zaentz will be both difficult and expensive.

However, there are two other good things in the article. Firstly, it seems that Jackson's remake of King Kong may happen after all. Jackson had agreed to make this for Universal about five years ago, but Universal got cold feet after Jackson's first Hollywood studio film, The Frighteneres failed at the box office. Given what Jackson has done since, keeping the King Kong remake on hold for when Jackson wants to do it is very sensible, but one doesn't always get sensible from Hollywood studios. (The one thing we don't need is another by the numbers King Kong remake from some hack).

The other thing is that Jackson appears to want to make another one of his good old splatter movies on the weekends. A lot of us would enjoy this.