Peter Jackson Originally Wanted To Direct Mortal Engines Himself

In an interview with Uproxx, Peter Jackson revealed that when he originally bought the rights to Mortal Engines in 2007, he planned on directing it himself. Instead, the adaptation that arrives in theaters this Friday was directed by Christian Rivers. Here are highlights:

On buying the rights to the books: “Yeah. Well, I read these books. There were four of them at the time. Mortal Engines was the first one. I read the first one and then I just enjoyed it so much that I went straight into the second and into the third and the fourth. So, I sort of binge-read these. And I just thought, “wow, these would be fantastic films.” So I inquired about the rights and they were available, so I got the rights. This is really about 2007 or 2008. But, at the time, I wanted to get the rights so that we could make the films in the future, but we were busy on District 9 and Tintin. Then straight after that, we got involved in The Hobbit for most of about six years. So even though I secured the rights, we didn’t have the chance to actually make the film until after The Hobbit, which is exactly what we ended up doing.”

On wanting to direct himself: “When I bought the rights back in 2007, I assumed that I would direct it for sure. That was just my natural assumption. But what happened, that I didn’t have any way of anticipating then: as a result of doing The Hobbit, Christian is someone who would put storyboards together and previews and he’s been working as part of our filmmaking family for about 25 years. So he graduated to becoming a second unit director on The Hobbit. And he directed some pretty key scenes like the Dwarves escaping in the barrels. And so, at the end of The Hobbit, I knew Christian was ready to direct his first feature film, whatever that would be.”

On Amazon sending him scripts for their Lord of the Rings series: “Well, I mean, they spoke to me. And they spoke to me quite a few months ago and what they needed is that team to just get involved straight-away and develop scripts. So I just couldn’t even think about doing it, because I was still working on these films. Both of these films were in post-production, and so I just said to them, “Look, I can’t get involved, and particularly right now. But if in the future you want to send me anything, I’m not sure how I can get involved, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea, but let’s just keep at it, talking.” So that was the last conversation that I had. I mean, if I can help them in some way, if it makes sense, I’m certainly happy to.”