PETER JACKSON was a nine-year-old in the New Zealand town of Pukerua Bay when he first saw the 1933 version of King Kong. He was in tears in front of the TV when the big gorilla slipped off the Empire State Building. Jackson has shed quite a few Kong-sized tears over the years, including when he finally met the star Fay Wray, frail at 96, a few weeks before she died and he started filming his version. Jackson made hobbits heroic, put the name Gollum up in lights and gave Harry Potter a run for his money. But even he could not do much about one narrative reality: this film has to end with an eight-metre-tall ape dead on 34th Street. [More]