King Kong (2005) on Netflix
PG-1320053h 8mActionAdventureDrama
In 1933 New York, out-of-work vaudeville performer Ann Darrow joins filmmaker Carl Denham's picture, and his cast and crew sail to a mysterious island where a giant ape named Kong lives.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.2/10474,725 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ann Darrow, a vaudeville performer scraping by in Depression-era New York, is hired by the cash-strapped filmmaker Carl Denham to appear in his picture, and she agrees once she learns that Jack Driscoll, her favorite playwright, wrote the script. The shoot takes her aboard the SS Venture, a cargo ship under Captain Englehorn, whose crew distrusts the voyage. Denham has told everyone the ship is bound for Singapore; his real target is Skull Island. Romance grows between Ann and Jack during the crossing. Fog and a grounding bring the Venture to Skull Island, where natives seize Ann and a rescue party goes after her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about King Kong (2005)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Peter Jackson first saw the 1933 King Kong at nine and was in tears when Kong was shot and fell from the Empire State Building; at 12 he tried to remake it with his parents' Super 8 camera and a wire-and-rubber Kong with his mother's fur coat for hair.
- During filming the budget rose from $175 million to $207 million, partly because Peter Jackson extended the running time by thirty minutes, and Jackson covered most of the $32 million surplus himself.
- Naomi Watts met Fay Wray, the original 1933 Ann Darrow; Peter Jackson wanted Wray to make a cameo and speak the film's final line, but she died during pre-production at 96 years old.
- Composer Howard Shore wrote several cues for King Kong before leaving over creative differences with Peter Jackson in October 2005; his replacement, James Newton Howard, had only five weeks to work on the film.
- Andy Serkis wore 135 small motion-capture markers attached to his face in a two-hour daily makeup session, then spent an extra two months after principal photography miming Kong's movements on a motion capture stage.
- For the abandoned 1990s version, Peter Jackson flew to the Titanic shoot in Mexico to discuss Ann Darrow with Kate Winslet; Minnie Driver was also considered, and his choices for Jack Driscoll and Carl Denham were George Clooney and Robert De Niro.
- Jackson revived a scene cut from the 1933 film in which giant spiders devour the sailors Kong shakes off a log into a ravine, a sequence Kong fans knew only from a rare Famous Monsters of Filmland still, and elaborated on it.
