Does Peter Jackson Know What Heaven Looks Like?
The production of 'The Lovely Bones' may be having some trouble
Recently news came out of a site I had not heard of called Flicks.co.nz saying there was trouble on the production of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, the film adaptation of the fantastic Alice Sebold novel.
The site reported a problem in the designing of heaven for the film as it is told from the perspective of a young girl who was raped and murdered. Susie Salmon is her name and she watches as the world without her unfolds and the effect it has on her family and friends.
The report goes as follows:
Our spies have reported that Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones ceased production at one stage due to a rift between the big man and his art director over the best way to depict Heaven. [...] The Wellington crew apparently took a break while the creative differences were sorted.
The reason I didn’t report on it was simply because IMDb has two art directors listed, not one, and the name of the art director was not mentioned. Basically it seemed like a rumor that had no legs.
However, the rumor just may be true as the release date of March 13, 2009 has apparently been scrapped as an email came in to my Inbox today asking me to “quickly” update the release date for The Lovely Bones to “Fall 2009″. Fall? That’s a lot different than Spring.
On top of that bit of news, Susan Sarandon chatted briefly about the film with Empire on the red carpet for Speed Racer. Sarandon plays the grandmother in the film and she said:
“I just finished that yes,” she said. “I play the comic relief, an alcoholic grandmother – my first grandma – but she doesn’t really seem like a real grandmother because she has a lot of hair and jewellery and nails and liquor. I don’t think I ever talk without a cigarette and a drink in my hand.”
“Peter Jackson is really a nice guy and very interesting. It was really a very different way of working. We had a good time, I’m really curious to see what it’s like because he kept pushing me to be more and more extreme and sometimes that’s when you make your big mistakes so I’m not sure how it will come off - it will be interesting to see it from the point of view of the audience.”
Not exactly confident and inspiring words. Oh, and to say the grandmother is “comic relief” is not a good thing at all. There is not a lot of laughing in this story.
Personally, after reading the novel, I felt Jackson had severely miscast this thing. Sarandon is fine as the grandmother, but the more important roles belong to the mother and father, which will be played by Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg. Sorry, as much as I love both of those actors I don’t think either one of them is right for the roles, especially Wahlberg’s clean cut look. Ryan Gosling was originally intended set for the Wahlberg role but he was ousted for apparently gaining too much weight.
The first set pics appeared online back in October 2007, which means the production is now in its seventh and eight months, which is an awfully long time unless Saoirse Ronan shot all of her scenes as Susie on green screen and Jackson is now in post working on the visual effects and not the set pieces for Heaven.
This is looking more and more like a movie that you most definitely should read the book first because the film may not be able to come close to the emotion the book carried. It was a wonderful read.
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