Production of the Lovely Bones seems to have grinded to a halt as Peter Jackson sent everyone home until he can sort out what heaven looks like. No, he isn’t hallucinating. He is in a heated dispute with an art director about how Heaven should look in the movie.
Peter Jackson and one of his art directors are in a big tiff on the set of The Lovely Bones. Why? Because they can’t agree on the film adaptation’s notion of Heaven. Filming has temporarily stopped until The Pearly Gates, a major aspect/set in the film, meets Jackson’s satisfaction.
So a while back we discussed Peter Jackson yanking the fans around as I quote John who said “he’s pretty much proved himself to be a lying weasel who uses and manipulates his fan base as mindless pawns to carry out his private battles in public.”
At the time of the Halo discussions that have become legendary around these parts, we lost a lot of respect for Peter Jackson at least in how he deals with his fans. Now this sounds dangerously like he is having other conflicts with other people as Lovely Bones seems to be ripe with social contraversy.
Ryan Gosling was dropped from the project because he put on some pounds for another role, and now he is bickering with his Art Director?
But before we shoot off on that assumption, lets keep in mind that we dont know that this is Jackson’s fault. Perhaps he is just passionate about getting it right and the Art Director has the imagery all wrong. As the Director of this movie, it is Jackson’s JOB to challenge the Art Director if he is straying from Jackson’s vision.
Ultimately this riff will either get settled with the replacement of an art director or one or the other is going to have to budge on their vision. considering it is Jackson’s rep that will be chewed to shreds if the vision of the heaven set is “wrong”, so he has to get it right.
I have to at least respect that he is standing his ground, and I hope that he is fighting a good cause, because if he is wrong the reviewers wont let him live it down. But he believes in this strongly enough to stop production and send everyone home until it gets cleared up and I have to respect him for that.