Peter Jackson wants to return to his low-budget roots after his three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” wraps up in 2014.
In fact, Hollywood’s most famous Kiwi wants to focus his camera on stories that are rooted in New Zealand, instead of just using the lush and mountainous country as a stand-in for Middle Earth, he told The New Zealand Herald this week.
“We have got a few bits and pieces that we are working on…The things that we are most excited about are some New Zealand stories,” Jackson said. “We just want to step off the Hollywood blockbuster thing for a while and we’ve had a few New Zealand stories in line for a while that we think would make great films.”
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He described his passion projects as in the vein of “Heavenly Creatures,” the 1994 true-life murder story that announced Jackson as a major talent. It’s not that Jackson has been entirely consumed with dwarfs and goblins. He’s also directed a remake of “King Kong” and an adaptation of the best-selling book “The Lovely Bones.”
Jackson noted that it was never his intention to return to the world of “The Lord of the Rings.” He ultimately had to slide behind the camera when the original choice to direct the films, “Pacific Rim”s’ Guillermo del Toro, left the project over production delays.
“In some respects in terms of my remaining film-making career this was a five-year chunk that was kind of taken out of it unexpectedly,” Jackson said of the experience of directing “The Hobbit.” “My future is five years less than I thought it was. I thought if I am going to do that I am actually going to enjoy it. I am going to have fun. Hopefully, that is reflected on the screen, too.”