Braindead is a 1992 New Zealand zombie comedy splatter film directed by Peter Jackson, produced by Jim Booth, and written by Stephen Sinclair, Fran Walsh, and Jackson based on an original story idea by Sinclair. It stars Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, Elizabeth Moody and Ian Watkin. The plot follows Lionel, a young man living in South Wellington with his strict mother Vera. After Lionel becomes romantically entangled with a girl named Paquita, Vera is bitten by a hybrid rat-monkey creature and begins to transform into a zombie, while also infecting swathes of the city's populace.
Andrew Clement Serkis is an English actor and filmmaker. He is best known for his motion capture roles comprising motion capture acting, animation and voice work for computer-generated characters such as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), King Kong in the eponymous 2005 film, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot series (2011–2017), Captain Haddock / Sir Francis Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin (2011), Baloo in his self-directed film Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018) and Supreme Leader Snoke in the Star Wars sequel trilogy filmsThe Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017), also portraying Kino Loy in the Star Wars Disney+ series Andor (2022).
Among motion pictures of Middle-earth in various formats, The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy of epic fantasy adventure films directed by Peter Jackson, based on the novel The Lord of the Rings by British author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are subtitled The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). Produced and distributed by New Line Cinema with the co-production of WingNut Films, the films feature an ensemble cast including Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Christopher Lee, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis, and Sean Bean.
Dame Frances Rosemary Walsh is a New Zealand screenwriter and film producer.
Philippa Jane Boyens is a New Zealand screenwriter who co-wrote the screenplay for The Lord of the Rings series, King Kong, The Lovely Bones, and the three-part film series The Hobbit.
James William Arthur "Jamie" Selkirk is a film editor and producer who has worked primarily in New Zealand. He is particularly noted for his work on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which he co-produced with Peter Jackson. He received the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for the last film of the trilogy, The Return of the King (2003).
There are many video games that have been inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's works set in Middle-earth. Titles have been produced by studios such as Electronic Arts, Vivendi Games, Melbourne House, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
Christian Rivers is a New Zealand storyboard artist, visual effects supervisor, special effects technician, and director. He first met Peter Jackson as a 17-year-old, and storyboarded all of Jackson's films since Braindead. He made his directing debut in the film adaptation of Mortal Engines, and planning a remake of The Dam Busters, both produced by Peter Jackson.
The production of The Lord of the Rings film series posed enormous challenges, both logistical and creative. Under Peter Jackson's direction, these obstacles were overcome between 1997 and 2004. Many attempts to produce J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings had failed; the few that had reached the screen were animations. Since the publication of the source novels in the mid-1950s, many filmmakers and producers had considered a film but then set the project aside. The series as filmed by Jackson consists of three epic fantasy adventure films. They were produced by New Line Cinema, assisted by WingNut Films. The cinema versions appeared between 2001 and 2003, and the extended edition for home video in 2004. Development began in August 1997. The films were shot simultaneously. Their production was undertaken entirely in Jackson's native New Zealand. It spanned the 14-month period from October 1999 until December 2000, with pick-up shots filmed over a further 24 months, from 2001 to 2003.
The Hobbit is a series of three fantasy adventure films directed by Peter Jackson. The films are subtitled An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). The films are based on J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, but much of the trilogy was inspired by the appendices to his 1954–55 The Lord of the Rings, which expand on the story told in The Hobbit. Additional material and new characters were created specially for the films. The series is a prequel to Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
Gollum is a monster with a distinctive style of speech in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He was introduced in the 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, and became important in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Gollum was a Stoor Hobbit of the River-folk who lived near the Gladden Fields. In The Lord of the Rings it is stated that he was originally known as Sméagol, corrupted by the One Ring, and later named Gollum after his habit of making "a horrible swallowing noise in his throat".
Sir Peter Robert Jackson is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) and the Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. Other notable films include the critically lauded drama Heavenly Creatures (1994), the horror comedy The Frighteners (1996), the epic monster remake film King Kong (2005), the World War I documentary film They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) and the documentary The Beatles: Get Back (2021). He is the fifth-highest-grossing film director of all-time, his films having made over $6.5 billion worldwide.
The Hunt for Gollum is a 2009 British fantasy fan film based on the appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1954–55 book The Lord of the Rings. The film is set in Middle-earth, when the wizard Gandalf the Grey fears that Gollum may reveal information about the One Ring to Sauron. Gandalf sends the ranger Aragorn on a quest to find Gollum.
Frodo Baggins is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings and one of the protagonists in The Lord of the Rings. Frodo is a hobbit of the Shire who inherits the One Ring from his cousin Bilbo Baggins, described familiarly as "uncle", and undertakes the quest to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom in Mordor. He is mentioned in Tolkien's posthumously published works, The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), set in his fictional world of Middle-earth, have been the subject of numerous motion picture adaptations across film and television.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a 2012 epic high fantasy adventure film directed by Peter Jackson from a screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Jackson, and Guillermo del Toro. It is based on the 1937 novel The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. The Hobbit trilogy is the first instalment in acting as a prequel to Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Mortal Engines is a 2018 post-apocalyptic steampunk film directed by Christian Rivers from a screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson, based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Philip Reeve. It stars Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving, Jihae, Ronan Raftery, Leila George, Patrick Malahide, and Stephen Lang. An American–New Zealand co-production, the film is set in a post-apocalyptic world where entire cities have been mounted on wheels and motorised, and practice municipal Darwinism; its movie universe is different from that of the books.
"The Shadow of the Past" is the second chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings, which was published in 1954–1955. Tolkien called it "the crucial chapter"; the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey labelled it "the vital chapter". This is because it represents both the moment that Tolkien devised the central plot of the book, and the point in the story where the protagonist, Frodo Baggins, and the reader realise that there will be a quest to destroy the Ring. A sketch of it was among the first parts of the book to be written, early in 1938; later that year, it was one of three chapters of the book that he drafted. In 1944, he returned to the chapter, adding descriptions of Gollum, the Ring, and the hunt for Gollum.
Commentators have compared Peter Jackson's 2001–2003 The Lord of the Rings film trilogy with the book on which it was based, J. R. R. Tolkien's 1954–1955 The Lord of the Rings, remarking that while both have been extremely successful commercially, the film version does not necessarily capture the intended meaning of the book. They have admired Jackson's ability to film the long and complex work at all; the beauty of the cinematography, sets, and costumes; the quality of the music; and the epic scale of his version of Tolkien's story. They have, however, found the characters and the story greatly weakened by Jackson's emphasis on action and violence at the expense of psychological depth; the loss of Tolkien's emphasis on free will and individual responsibility; the flattening out of Tolkien's balanced treatment of evil to a simple equation of the One Ring with evil; and the replacement of Frodo's inner journey by an American "hero's journey" or monomyth with Aragorn as the hero.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an upcoming anime fantasy film directed by Kenji Kamiyama from a screenplay by Jeffrey Addiss & Will Matthews and Phoebe Gittins & Arty Papageorgiou, based on characters created by J. R. R. Tolkien. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation and Sola Entertainment in association with WingNut Films, it stars Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Miranda Otto, Laurence Ubong Williams, and Shaun Dooley. The War of the Rohirrim is set 183 years before Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and tells the story of Helm Hammerhand (Cox), a legendary king of Rohan, and his family as they defend their kingdom against an army of Dunlendings.
