TSPDT

Key Production Countries: New Zealand, USA
Key Genres: Fantasy Adventure, Sword-and-Sorcery, Fantasy, Comedy, Action, Epic, Horror Comedy, Horror, Documentary
Key Collaborators: Fran Walsh (Screenwriter/Producer), Philippa Boyens (Screenwriter), Andrew Lesnie (Cinematographer), Jamie Selkirk (Editor), Jabez Olssen (Editor), Ian McKellen (Leading Actor), Howard Shore (Composer), Grant Major (Production Designer), Carolynne Cunningham (Producer), Elijah Wood (Leading Character Actor), Martin Freeman (Leading Actor), Liv Tyler (Leading Actress)

"Jackson's career had moved full circle by the 1990s: he had shifted from making low-budget, cult New Zealand movies to crafting high-budget, cult New Zealand movies. Not only are his latter day films in much better taste than his earlier bad taste outings, but by adapting Tolkien's cult novels, and remaking a Hollywood cult movie of the 1930s, Jackson has cleverly guaranteed that he can conform to the mainstream, yet can still maintain a loyal cult following." - Matt Hills (501 Movie Directors)

"Anarchic New Zealand-born director who has made a virtue of the title of his first film - Bad Taste. A few years earlier his films might have been condemned in a body as video nasties - but festival and critical approval has brought recognition and (almost) respectability to Jackson's charnel-house work, a world in which slicing someone's head off with a meat cleaver represents a tame demise... Lord knows where Jackson goes from here, but it's going to be an exciting ride." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)

"The visionary epic style of the Tolkien films (if you can trust the first part) was forged originally in the gleeful manufacture of low-budget gore movies. And nothing stands between the two extremes of anti-respectability and who knows how many Oscars but the astonishing Heavenly Creatures, the giddiest teenage murder spree in the movies and one of the most rapturous portraits of adolescent pathology. The Rings trilogy may not be our Wagner. Nevertheless, it may be the end to old-fashioned theatrical movie-going. Or a new beginning? The eleven Oscars for the film equaled the record, and included the Oscar for direction. So, we are all New Zealanders now, but will Jackson ever regain the smack and shock of Heavenly Creatures?" - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2010)

"Where George Lucas, whose lead Jackson seems to be following in terms of big budget independence from Hollywood, used his digital mastery to create a photo-realistic fantasy world without believable human inhabitants, Jackson breeds characters first and then erects magisterial settings around them. An intelligent treatment of material coupled with his ability to play to the crowd (even Rings still shows traces of the mischievous gruesome humour of Bad Taste and zombie gadabout Braindead) has won him almost unparalleled respect from audiences and critics." - New York Film Academy, 2014

"Jackson's achievement in staying put at home and persuading the Hollywood money to come to him bodes well for his country's film industry. Most successful New Zealand directors have used their first major hit as a springboard for Hollywood. Jackson, remaining true to his roots, has set up his own production base (Wingnut Films) in his home town of Wellington. "I choose to stay in New Zealand earning a fraction of what I could make in Los Angeles because I want to do whatever I feel like doing...The freedom that I have in New Zealand is worth millions of dollars to me." - Philip Kemp (Film Reference)

"An enthusiastic amateur film-maker as a child, he gradually refined his efforts and eventually made his feature debut with the low-budget splatter film Bad Taste (1987). Initially regarded mainly as a director of gory horror films, he won a different level of recognition and acclaim for his work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films." - Chambers Film Factfinder, 2006

"People always said, 'How can your imagination compete with the [LOTR] books; how can you put things on the screen that are going to be better than what people have in their minds?' I understood the rationale behind that. [But] I started to believe it was possible when I saw Alan Lee [conceptual artist] produce sketches for me that were so much better than what was in my mind. I knew then that it was possible to show things on-screen beyond what people imagined." - Peter Jackson