4 Building a Shrewder Ape	KING KONG PRODUCTION NOTES Introduction Movie Profile Synopsis A Filmmaker's Dream The Story of King Kong A Young Dreamer Meets a Classic Story 4Casting Kong: Keeping Original Time Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow Jack Black as Carl Denham Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll Captain, Assistant, Orphan Building a Shrewder Ape Andy Serkis as Kong 4Filming Kong: An Island Off the Charts Cool-Looking Dinosaurs Primitive Islanders A Fully Digitalized Kong A City That No Longer Exists Shooting in Non-Digital World 35-Year Journey Neared End 4Other Stuff: Articles & Interviews Picture Galleries King Kong Poster Store 3Website Home
	Getting to the particular Kong at the center of Jackson's remake was of paramount concern to filmmakers, and all involved had very strong ideas about how this Kong would be brought to the screen. Philippa Boyens explains, “Very early on, right from the word `go,' Peter wanted to make sure that the character of Kong was not a monster and was, in fact, a large silverback gorilla who happens to be 25 feet tall and 8,000 pounds. This Kong was not a monster and was not to be anthropomorphized.” Jackson describes his central character: “We assumed that Kong is the last surviving member of his species. He had a mother and a father and maybe brothers and sisters, but they're dead. He's the last of the huge gorillas that live on Skull Island, and the last one when he goes… there will be no more. He's a very lonely creature-absolutely solitary.  It must be one of the loneliest existences you could ever possibly imagine. Every day, he has to battle for his survival against very formidable dinosaurs on the island, and it's not easy for him. He's carrying the scars of many former encounters with dinosaurs. I'm imagining he's probably 100 to 120 years old by the time our story begins. And he has never felt a single bit of empathy for another living creature in his long life; it has been a brutal life that he's lived.” The screenwriters began to fashion a mythology for Kong that dovetailed with the original 1933 concept, but also gave them a wider playing field for their special silverback gorilla. The Skull Islanders have long deified the giant gorilla species, though none can even remember how this came to be. It is simply accepted that at regular intervals throughout the year, a woman is lashed to the sacrificial altar and offered up to the last remaining ape-god; the gorilla is summoned, and he snatches the girl and leaves.