Peter Jackson recreated 1930s downtown New York on a back lot in New Zealand, but says northeast Pennsylvania is too distinctive to replicate for his new movie, “The Lovely Bones.”
Jackson told the film Web site aintitcool.com that a visit to Norristown, near Philadelphia, where the book “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold is set, made him feel “very strongly” that some of the movie should be shot on location there.
“It’s a very distinctive area,” the 44-year-old filmmaker said.
“The Lovely Bones” is a story narrated by a 14-year-old girl who speaks from heaven about her rape and murder and tells of how her loved ones cope with the crime.
“I did think about doing a New Zealand shoot and faking that part of the world, but it’s really very different than what we have in New Zealand and it’s very distinctive and it is an integral part of the book,” he said.
Jackson transformed a back lot near New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, into 1930s New York for his remake of “King Kong” and New Zealand’s countryside into Middle Earth for the trilogy “Lord of the Rings.”
Studio shooting will be done in New Zealand, Jackson said.
He has yet to choose a lead actress but said that issue would not be considered until filming was much closer.
“There are some very good young actresses out there now and in some respects we haven’t thought too much about it because we’ve been uncertain about exactly when we’d shoot,” Jackson said.
“I think we’re going to wait a little bit longer until we have a definitive start date because it is an age where people are growing up very fast,” he told the Web site. “We are dealing with that 14-year-old age group.”