The L.A. Times wrote:Spielberg wins bidding war for 'Lovely Bones'
By Claudia Eller and Lorenza Muñoz, Times Staff Writers
May 5, 2007
Steven Spielberg has finally landed "The Lovely Bones."
After years of pursuing the movie rights to Alice Sebold's 2004 bestseller, the DreamWorks SKG co-founder won a bidding war to finance the movie, which will be directed by Peter Jackson whose credits include the "Lord of the Rings" franchise.
This ends a weeklong negotiation. Three other major studios — Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. — also vied for the right to bankroll Jackson's next movie.
DreamWorks won out because of Spielberg's relationship with Jackson in addition to the studio's marketing approach. However, details on that plan were not available.
According to a person privy to the deal, DreamWorks is paying Jackson just under $65 million to make the film, including his producing and directing fees.
However, other people involved in the bidding said there were offers on the table that would have paid Jackson a substantial upfront fee on top of the $65-million production budget as well as guaranteeing him a large percentage of the profit. Jackson usually commands $20 million upfront as an advance against 20% of the profit.
In any case, "The Lovely Bones" is a risky proposition, given that it's a dark adult drama about the fallout of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl who narrates her tale from heaven.
Some executives who read Jackson's screenplay, which he wrote with his wife, Fran Walsh, and collaborator Phillipa Boyens, say they found it to be a redemptive story about spiritual healing and overcoming loss. Others, however, were concerned that the scenes depicting the girl's rape and murder would be too graphic and disturbing for mainstream audiences.
Movies depicting molestation or homicides involving children are usually a tough sell. But DreamWorks is not scared off by difficult subject matter: Its 1999 sleeper hit "American Beauty" was a dark drama about a middle-aged man who falls in love with one of his daughter's teenage friends, and the story ends in tragedy. The film grossed $353 million worldwide and won several Oscars including best picture.
Jackson plans to start shooting the movie in October in Pennsylvania, where the story is set. Special effects would be shot in Jackson's New Zealand studio.
In other Peej news, he got to play with a couple of the new-fangled Red Digital Cinema cameras to make a short film for Red's NAB booth. You can see stills from it here.
Red wrote:Peter Jackson shoots RED footage for NAB presentation
Academy Award winning director Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings Trilogy" and King Kong") volunteered to shoot 4K footage for RED to use at NAB 2007. What started out as a test session quickly turned into a movie. Peter and his team shot RED Alpha prototypes, "Boris" and "Natasha", for 2 days in New Zealand just two weeks before the opening of NAB. All footage was shot using RED's proprietary REDCODE RAW 4K codec and recorded to RED DRIVES.
Now I'm curious to see if he uses them on Lovely Bones.