Set in 1933, it follows the story of an ambitious filmmaker who coerces his cast and hired ship crew to travel to mysterious Skull Island.

In 1933, during the Great Depression, struggling New York City vaudeville performer Ann Darrow is hired by financially troubled filmmaker Carl Denham to star in a film with actor Bruce Baxter.

Filming takes place on the SS Venture, a small cargo ship belonging to the Dutch East Indies colony, anchored in Surabaya under Captain Englehorn.

Englehorn rescues Carl’s group, but as they all prepare to leave, the natives secretly abduct Ann to offer her as a sacrifice to Kong, a 25-foot-tall (7.6 m) ape.

The party gets caught between a herd of Brontosaurus baxteri and a pack of Utahraptor-like Venatosaurus saevidicus hunting them, with Herb and several other men killed in the resulting stampede.

The remaining party members continue through the jungle when Kong attacks, making them fall into a ravine where Carl loses his camera.

Six United States Navy biplanes arrive; Kong downs three of them, but is mortally wounded from the planes' gunfire and falls from the building after he dies.

As Jack reaches the top of the building to comfort and embrace Ann, civilians, policemen, and soldiers gather around the beast's corpse in the street, one bystander commenting the airplanes got him.

Frequent Jackson collaborator Howard Shore makes a cameo appearance as the conductor of the New York theater from where Kong escapes.

"[13] The native extras on Skull Island were portrayed by a mix of Asian, African, Maori and Polynesian actors sprayed with dark makeup to achieve a consistent pigmentation.

[13] Peter Jackson was nine years old when he first saw the 1933 film, and was in tears in front of the television when Kong was shot and fell off the Empire State Building.

The studio was adamant to work with Jackson on his next project[15] and, in late 1995,[16] offered him the chance to direct a remake of the 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Jackson was also warranted the right of final cut privilege, a percentage of the gross profits,[16] as well as artistic control; Universal allowed all filming and visual effects to be handled entirely in New Zealand.

[16] In the original draft, Ann was the daughter of famed English archaeologist Lord Linwood Darrow exploring ancient ruins in Sumatra.

In March 2003, Universal set a target December 2005 release date and Jackson and Walsh brought The Lord of the Rings co-writer Philippa Boyens on to help rewrite their 1996 script.

[21] Jackson made a deal with Universal whereby he would be paid a $20 million salary against 20% of the box office gross for directing, producing and co-writing.

[15] In the scene where Kong shakes the surviving sailors pursuing Ann and himself from a log into the ravine, for example, directors Merian Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack originally intended to depict giant spiders emerging from the rock to devour their bodies.

[10] Jackson, Walsh and Boyens also cited Delos W. Lovelace's 1932 novelisation of King Kong as inspiration,[16] which included the character Lumpy (Andy Serkis).

Camperdown housed the native village and the Great Wall, while the streets of New York City were constructed on its backlot and at Gracefield in Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

The majority of the SS Venture scenes were shot aboard a full-scale deck constructed in the parking lot at Camperdown Studio and then were backed with a green screen, with the ocean digitally added in post.

Scenes set in the Broadway theater from which King Kong makes his escape were filmed in Wellington's Opera House and at the Auckland Civic Theatre.

[30] Following principal photography, Serkis had to spend an additional two months on a motion capture stage, miming Kong's movements for the film's digital animators.

[35] Due to creative differences with Jackson, Shore opted out of the project in October 2005 and subsequently James Newton Howard replaced him.

[38] Recording sessions took place at the Sony Scoring Stage, California and Todd-AO, Los Angeles, consisting of 108-piece orchestra and 40-member choir, and a varied range of instruments used.

The diaries started shortly after the DVD release of The Return of the King as a way to give Jackson's The Lord of the Rings fans a glimpse of his next project.

They consist of features that would normally be seen in a making-of documentary: a tour of the set, a roving camera introducing key players behind the scene, a peek inside the sound booth during last-minute dubbing, or Andy Serkis doing his ape movements in a motion capture studio.

There was also a hardback book entitled The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, featuring artwork from Weta Workshop to describe the film's fictional wildlife.

During its home video release, King Kong sold over $100 million worth of DVDs in the largest six-day performance in Universal Studios history.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Featuring state-of-the-art special effects, terrific performances, and a majestic sense of spectacle, Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong is a potent epic that's faithful to the spirit of the 1933 original.

Another set was released, including a WETA figurine of a bullet-ridden Kong scaling the Empire State Building, roaring at the Navy with Ann in hand.