Naomi Watts couldn’t get back to Hollywood this month to promote her new horror film, “The Ring Two,” but she has a good excuse.
For the past 113 days, she’s been held captive on Skull Island by a giant monkey.
We’re talking about “King Kong,” that $150 million gorilla of a blockbuster that “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson has been shooting in New Zealand since last fall.
Jackson’s remake of the 1933 classic won’t hit theaters until Dec. 14, but it’s already the most anticipated movie of the year for many film geeks, including Watts herself.
“It’s like nothing I’ve experienced before, that’s for sure,” says the Australian star, who’s taking over the Ann Darrow character made famous by Fay Wray.
“There’s a lot of genius at work.”
“Kong” is a dream project for Jackson, who’s very first movie, when he was only 13 years old, was a homemade remake of “King Kong,” with a Manhattan skyline that he painted on a sheet.
Jackson, a verifiable “Kong” fanatic, owns perhaps the world’s largest collection of props from the original 1933 film, including drums, spears, two brontosaurus heads, a stegosaur and the fist-sized Kong model used in the scene when the gorilla falls off the Empire State Building.
Jackson’s collection will be something to watch for – he’s going to find a way to put everything from his collection into the new movie, says his friend Harry Knowles, editor of the film-geek Web site AintItCoolNews.com.
By all accounts, Jackson’s “Kong,” which co-stars Adrian Brody and Jack Black, will make audiences forget that regrettable Jessica Lange remake from 1976.
It’ll feature a much more realistic gorilla, for one thing.
Though the actual monkey will be inserted into the film digitally, the actors are performing their scenes with Kong opposite a real actor – Andy Serkis, who similarly gave life to the computer-generated Gollum in “Lord of the Rings.”
Serkis, who’s significantly shorter than 6-foot, plays the 25-foot Kong standing high in the air on a scissor lift, so that the other actors are filmed looking at the spot where the gorilla’s face will be.
He wears a black nylon costume with knuckle-dragging arm extensions, but Watts insists, “It’s not just a guy in a monkey suit.”
Serkis spent several weeks studying primates in Rwanda and at the London Zoo.
“Andy completely understands their behavior,” Watts has said.
“When I look into his eyes, I’m getting monkey.”
That attention to detail runs through the whole production, including on a giant 1930s New York street scene that Jackson built in suburban Wellington, N.Z.
The buildings are only one-story tall – the rest will be added with computer special effects – but on street level, the set really looks like old Manhattan, with steam hissing out of vents and street vendors selling hot potatoes.
“We want to blow people away with just how epic New York is,” Jackson has said. “I want to have blocks and blocks, endless avenues and buildings, thousands of cars.”
The film starts in this Depression-era Manhattan, as Watts’ character has just lost her job as a vaudeville actress.
Hard up for money, she signs on with a Captain Ahab-like film director (Black) and a dashing fighter pilot (Brody) on an foolhardy boat trip to make a movie on mysterious Skull Island in the South Pacific, where others have gone but never returned.
Anyone who wants to see “Kong” fresh might not want to read more, but for those who don’t mind spoilers, there are plenty of Web sites where you can find behind-the-scenes reports on the movie.
Jackson himself has been stoking anticipation for months with entertaining and generous video production diaries on his official Web site KongIsKing.net.
He also Knowles to send a reporter from Ain’t It Cool News, and writer Eric Vespe has wound up spending three months on the set since last fall, including all of February.
Vespe, who writes as “Quint,” has filed remarkably detailed on-set reports.
He watched Serkis and Watts do a scene in which Kong defends Darrow from a pack of rampaging dinosaurs on Skull Island and another in which Brody, Black and their boat crew are nearly washed overboard by a horrifying sea storm.
He got to see Jackson “jumping about and pretending he’s a monkey” during rehearsals for a scene in which Kong breaks loose and starts tearing up New York.
“It was totally funny and totally Peter,” Vespe recalls.
“He was throwing around these boxes, with ‘car’ and ‘bus’ written on them, and terrifying the extras with his gorilla noises.”
But all that monkeying around – not to mention several months of shooting – has left Jackson exhausted.
“Peter’s pretty wiped out,” Vespe says.
“He’s very focused when he’s on set, but the rest of the time, he’s usually slumped on the couch or trying to catch a nap.”