Peter Jackson

A unique and personal account of the six-year quest to film The Lord of the Rings, together with revealing insights into the award-winning director's life and films, including the 2005 blockbuster 'King Kong'. Once, Peter Jackson was a name unknown to all but a small band of loyal fans and fellow film-makers.

Now he is the newest member of Hollywood's elite fellowship, with his name on the most successful movie trilogy of all time.

Written with Jackson's full participation, this extensive biography, illustrated with never-before-seen photos from Jackson's personal collection, tells the inside story of how a New Zealander became Hollywood's hottest property - from the early cult classics, through Academy Award-winning success with Kate Winslet's Heavenly Creatures, the abandoned King Kong remake, and the filming of The Lord of the Rings, a project which was abandoned two years into pre-production, rejected by most of the other studios and then picked up by New Line Cinema in the biggest gamble in film history.

Drawing upon interviews with fifty of Peter Jackson's colleagues and contemporaries, author Brian Sibley paints a portrait of a true auteur, a man gifted with single-minded determination and an artist's vision.

Jackson himself is both revealing and insightful about The Lord of the Rings; through his personal shooting diary, he tells of the highs and lows that could not be disclosed until the award-winning films were finally completed: from over-zealous script doctors and accountants to the tantrums and frustrations on-set and disastrous early screenings.

How he did not sleep during a punishing 15-month shoot, and how even after the films were in the can major rewrites and reshoots were necessary. Jackson also discusses the filming of King Kong, for which he finally secured one of the most lucrative deals in Hollywood's history.