We all know that Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens are powerful filmmakers. Here I’m not talking about their creative abilities, which are obvious, but about their power within the film industry to go after projects that appeal to them personally. The Lord of the Rings (and Peter’s other films, as we’ll see below) gave them the financial clout to proceed without a studio attached.

Numerous interviews have touched on how Philippa was the first to read The Lovely Bones back in 2004. She passed it along to Fran, who passed it along to Peter. They set out to acquire the production rights.

Most filmmakers would have to find a company to finance the film before acquiring it, but this trio bought the rights themselves. The November/December 2009 issue of Creative Screenwriting has an interview with Fran and Philippa talking about how that happened:

As it turned out, the film rights were not available but Ken Kamins, Walsh and Boyens’ [and Peter’s] manager, started tracking the rights and calling the writers the minute they freed up again. By this point, the book was already a bestselling phenomenon, which meant they had a small window of opportunity to lock up the film. “We had to very quickly make that decision, ‘Do we want to do this?’” Boyens recalls, “So we had Peter take a look at it.”

As he put the book down, Jackson knew that he wanted it to be his next film. Then, their friend Tessa Ross, the head of film production at BBC’s Channel 4, put them in touch with the novelist, Alice Sebold, who quickly saw that she could trust the writers with her masterpiece. “I think she knew we loved the story, and she could see we were excited about it,” Boyens says. “She was really wonderful to us. This is her baby, but she’s been terrific and only ever wished us well.” What may have sealed the deal was the fact that Sebold’s husband, Glen, was a giant fan of Jackson’s pre-Rings splatter films—a fortuitous sign that the collaboration was meant to be.

The deal for the rights went through on January 18, 2005, so the project turned out to be a long one.

The trio went ahead with the script “on spec,” still without having a studio attached:

It’s rare when writers of a certain stature agree to write a script on spec because they have the luxury of making deals with studios based solely on their reputations or, in this case, their Oscars long before any actual writing starts. But Walsh, Boyens, and Jackson avoided that route. Because of the nature of Sebold’s writing, The Lovely Bones can offer a completely unique experience to each reader, and they wanted to make sure their adaptation was their vision of her work, not a studio’s. “We felt that, in the end, it would allow us to make the film we wanted to make,” Walsh explains. “It put us in the position where we weren’t beholden to them and they weren’t controlling the content.”

Producing District 9 largely on his own was another indication of the degree of clout Peter has in part through the lingering impact of Rings on him and his teammates.

The Lovely Bones is playing in a few theaters and will “open wide” on January 15.

As I write this, I’m preparing for a four-week trip to Paris, Berlin, and Brussels. I will try to post during that time, since we all are expecting big news soon. As always, TheOneRing.net will keep us up to date.