stuff.co.nz, a New Zealand new aggregator, has published a brief but fascinating little story on Peter Jackson. While the rest of us are pointing out how incredibly successful Peter has been in carrying through on his ambitious plans, he’s apparently worrying about failing. The story quotes him:

“You’re always imagining the best, and then you always have to compromise for what you get in the real world,” Jackson said.

“It’s a process of constant disappointment. But somehow you have to hope that you set your goals high enough that even with the disappointment, you still end up with something that other people enjoy.”

I’m not sure that adds up to being “driven by fear of failure,” as the headline rather melodramatically puts it. I think anyone who’s had even a moderate degree of success fears failure.

Still, Peter has more reason to worry than most of us, since a great deal is riding on his continued success. Among the companies that Peter owns or co-owns–WingNut, Park Road Post, and Weta Ltd.–there are hundreds of employees. Thousands at the height of a big production, and the filmmaking infrastructure in Wellington seems always to be hard at work on a big production these days. Peter and his partners feel an enormous responsibility to those employees, and a big flop would affect many of them.

Along the way, the stuff.co article also mentions that Peter “has just finished the screenplay for the Hobbit film.” More confirmation that the script–and that would be for the first half of the two-part film–is finished. Now it’s presumably in the process of being budgeted and greenlighted. A film not likely to flop.

I doubt The Lovely Bones will fail, either. For a start, the trailer looks pretty good to me. Plus, now that Martin Scorsese’sShutter Island (originally October 2, now February 19) has been put back to the spring, Paramount has only two films due for release in the fourth quarter, Up in the Air, a George Clooney film gaining Oscar buzz (exact release date not announced) and The Lovely Bones (December 11). That will almost certainly lead the studio to concentrate on publicizing these two and pushing them for Oscar noms.

Thanks to fan and fellow blogger Ryan Rasmussen for alerting me to this story! You can find his blog, currently featuring a review of District 9 and multiple entries on his recent trip to New Zealand (with some beautiful photos) here.