But all that didn't mean Peter Jackson could use his own visual-effects company for his latest movie as producer, the science-fiction thriller District 9 .
I got turned down,'' he says with a laugh. ''I fully expected them to do the visual effects but they've been doing Avatar for Jim Cameron. That's a huge, huge film and they just said to me, 'Look, we really can't take on another project. It's going to kill us.'''
Jackson, who made District 9 with the first-time feature-film director Neill Blomkamp, went to Vancouver for most of the visual effects. The celebrated filmmaker and his 29-year-old protege have delivered one of the year's most original movies, a documentary-style thriller about the clash between humans and aliens who arrived 20 years ago in a huge spaceship over South Africa.
The prawn-like creatures have been corralled in a shanty town near Johannesburg. But with their numbers swelling, the company keeping them imprisoned tries to move them to another district, with violent consequences.
The movie, which was shot in Johannesburg and Soweto, shows a different kind of apartheid - humans and aliens. It came about because of Jackson's love for the game Halo.
I'm a huge, big Halo fan,'' he says on the phone from Wellington. ''I love playing it.''
Three years ago, Jackson planned to make a movie version of the game with Blomkamp until it collapsed amid politicking between Hollywood studios.
It became clear that it wasn't going to happen and that we'd just wasted three or four months, especially Neill, who'd devoted all this time to supervising these pretty wonderful designs,'' he says.
Jackson, who has slimmed down and lost the geeky glasses, suggested to the devastated Blomkamp they develop their own movie. Why not expand his short film Alive in Joburg ?
It's a very simplified seven- or eight-minute version of the premise of District 9 ,'' Jackson says. ''Aliens have landed in South Africa, they're directionless and aimless, they're like refugees and they're dumped in a township in Johannesburg and are seen as a social threat to the community - it's a terrific concept for a film …
One morning we woke up and thought we were doing Halo . And by the time we went to bed that night, it was District 9 .''
Both filmmakers were determined that the movie be entertaining rather than political.
There's not a single scene in the movie that's really staged to ram politics down anyone's throat,'' Jackson says. ''The beauty of District 9 is that because the situation is so potent - and so black and white - there's nothing subtle about it.
You have these aliens, they're in a township, they're treated rather badly. We know exactly what that's like … so we're able to just get on with telling the sci-fi thriller story."
Jackson was not concerned that the characters speak with thick South African accents.
Accents are only a problem for Americans, really,'' he says. ''And they're only a problem with the big-budget Hollywood films. Everyone gets very worried about it. But we had the freedom to do whatever we wanted. Neill was raised in South Africa and he wanted to make the movie feel very authentic.''
After all those years making Lord of the Rings , Jackson thoroughly enjoyed producing rather than directing
I was able to do the fun stuff and not get too bogged down in the less-than-fun aspects of it,'' he says. ''I didn't need to be involved it the shooting of the film - I never visited the set once because in a way there's no role for me on set. It's Neill's movie; he's the director. My job was to help him make the movie he wanted to make.''
The wonder is that Jackson had time to take a mentoring role. With Kiwi understatement, he describes himself as ''pretty busy for a couple of years now''.
As well as releasing The Lovely Bones in December, he is working on scripts for The Hobbit . The plan is for del Toro to shoot two movies from about March next year.
Jackson is also working with Spielberg, who is finishing the cut of the first Tintin movie.
The Tintin films are being done through motion capture and performance capture, with actors wearing suits with the little dots on them and the computer records their performances. It's getting very sophisticated now. We can record all their facial performance and their dialogue. Even eye blinks can be recorded by the computer now.''
Late next year, Jackson will direct the second Tintin movie. If he plans it right, he might even get to use his own visual-effects company.
District 9 is in cinemas now. Read Sandra Hall's review in Spectrum.
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