If you take 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' as books, one is written for children, and one is an adult's book.
— Peter Jackson
I'm not a regret guy.
We've all forgotten how to be original.
We are living in an age where teenagers are not going to the movies.
I think it's important that filmmakers look at the technology and figure out how to make the theatrical experience a little more exciting.
Anything you can imagine, you can put on film.
Once the film is out and a lot of people are seeing it, it becomes almost owned by the cinemagoers of the world.
The Tolkien estate owns the writings of Professor Tolkien. 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' were sold by Professor Tolkien in the late '60s, the film rights.
One of the best things about growing up in New Zealand is that if you are prepared to work hard and have faith in yourself, truly anything is possible.
We have lost close friends and relatives to cancer and Parkinson's disease, and the level of personal suffering inflicted on patients and their families by these diseases is horrific.
What I think is remarkable about my mum and dad is they had no interest in films, really. None.
I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.
I remember when I was - I must've been 17 or 18 years old - I remember 'The Empire Strikes Back' had a big cliffhanger ending, and it was, like, three years before the next one came out.
I just think that we're living in a world where the technology is advancing so rapidly. You're having cameras that are capable of more and more - the resolution on cameras is jumping up.
If you make a trilogy, the whole point is to get to that third chapter, and the third chapter is what justifies what's come before.
To direct a genuinely animated film, you're really having meetings and discussing what you want with animators who then go off and produce one shot at a time that you look at and comment on.
Strategically, horror films are a good way to start your career. You can get a lot of impact with very little.
If you're a filmmaker, and every time you finish a film, you just naturally go, 'Oh, I could have done so much better,' that's not much fun, is it, really? You might as well go pick another profession if that really is how you derive satisfaction from it.
Forty-eight frames per second is a way, way better way to look at 3D. It's so much more comfortable on the eyes.
For me, utter failure is to make a film that people pay their money to go see and they don't like.
I can't take responsibility for everyone's employment.
The industry has to have the audience in order to make these films. So it's a serious thing - how do you get people to leave their houses and go to the theater?
Obviously, with a CGI character, you're building a character in much the same way as a real creature is built. You build the bones, the skeletons, the muscles. You put layers of fat on. You put a layer of skin on which has to have a translucency, depending on what the character is.
Over 55% of all shots using animals in 'The Hobbit' are in fact computer generated; this includes horses, ponies, rabbits, hedgehogs, birds, deer, elk, mice, wild boars and wolves.
I haven't got a real job.
Continuing advances in stem cell medicine will change all of our lives for the better.
There's a generation of children who don't like black and white movies. There's a level of impatience or intolerance now.
I'm always embarrassed by those rugby player autobiographies which get written by journalists.
Too often, you see film makers from other countries who have made interesting, original films, and then they come here and get homogenized into being hack Hollywood directors. I don't want to fall into that.
Critics in particular treat CGI as a virus that's infecting film.
I never wanted to do 'The Hobbit' in the first place.
'The Return Of The King' has a conclusion.
If you take a regular animated film, that's being done by animators on computers, so the filmmaking is a fairly technical process.
Learning how to edit movies was a real breakthrough.
You can't always look at life as a miserable thing.
It's not a happy time when a film drops dead on your doorstep.
I didn't want people to sit there and watch 10 minutes of film,and all they write about is 48 frames.
I'm not going to head off and do a Marvel film. So if I don't do a Marvel film, I don't have any other choice - I've got to go make a small New Zealand movie!
100 years ago, movies were black-and-white, silent, and 16 frames a second. So 100 years from now, what are they going to be?
The first day I start shooting, I start having a recurring nightmare that every single night that I am lying in bed, and there is a film crew surrounding the bed, waiting for me to tell them what to do, and I don't quite know what movie I am supposed to be making.
The producers of 'The Hobbit' take the welfare of all animals very seriously and have always pursued the highest standard of care for animals in their charge.
I feel very lucky to be able to make movies in New Zealand, and I will always be grateful for the support I have received from so many New Zealanders.
Stem cell therapy has the potential to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses, which up until now have been labelled 'incurable.'
It's one thing to support your kid, but if you have an interest in what your child is doing, it makes it a whole lot easier.
I always have had a slightly jaundiced view about people who promote books about themselves.
If you're an only child, you spend a lot of time by yourself, and you develop a strong ability to entertain yourself, to conjure up fantasy.
We had to get past the mechanical film age to be able to explore other things, but it will be interesting.
I love Bilbo Baggins. I relate really well to Bilbo!
I never overtly analyse my own movies, I don't think that's my job to do that. I just muddle through and do what I think is best for the movie.
Obviously, movies, you're often on location, out in the rain or the sun, in a real place where the trees and the cars are real. But when you're on stage, as an actor you're imagining the environment that you're in.
