Sir Peter Jackson said the honour 'is one of the greatest privileges of my career'. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Sir Peter Jackson said the honour 'is one of the greatest privileges of my career'. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Sir Peter Jackson is set to receive an Honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his life’s work in film.
He will be given the honour on May 12 at the opening ceremony of the 79th festival.
The director, producer and writer will join the likesof Agnès Varda, Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, and Robert De Niro, who have received the prestigious award, the festival announced.
“To be honoured with an Honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes is one of the greatest privileges of my career,” said Jackson.
Elijah Wood as Hobbit Frodo in The Fellowship of The Ring. Photo / supplied
While he never had a film in official selection at Cannes, it is where the filmmaker won over the distributors who bought his work.
In 1988, he secured distribution at the festival’s marketplace with his first movie, Bad Taste. Then, in 2001, he screened a 26-minute preview from The Fellowship of the Ring.
The film’s success was stratospheric. Jackson became a household name and the Lord of the Rings trilogy went on to bag 17 Oscars, with Return of the King snatching 11 alone.
The films took in $3 billion in revenue, making it one of the most profitable film series of all time.
Jackson said Cannes was an important place for himself and cinema.
“This festival has always celebrated bold, visionary cinema, and I’m incredibly grateful to the Festival de Cannes for being recognised among the filmmakers and the artists whose work continues to inspire me.”
Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson, winners of Best Adapted Screenplay for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Photo / Albert L. Ortega/WireImage
Festival director Thierry Frémaux said there is “clearly a before and an after Peter Jackson. Larger-than-life cinema is his trademark, and his all-encompassing art of entertainment is particularly ambitious”.
“He has permanently transformed Hollywood cinema and its conception of the spectacle. But Peter Jackson is not only a great technician; he is above all a tremendous storyteller. And an unpredictable artist: what will his next universe be?”
Jackson first found success with Bad Taste, before releasing Braindead in 1992 and Heavenly Creatures in 1994.
Melanie Lynskey (left) as Pauline Parker and Kate Winslet as Juliet Hulme in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures.
Then in a monumental feat, the Kiwi filmmaker undertook a “colossal logistical challenge” to release the three Lord of the Rings movies in three consecutive years.
The films took years of work and cost around $500m to produce, involving 274 days of filming, three years of post-production and 20,602 extras.
The three films were shot simultaneously between October 1999 and December 2000.
Post Lord of the Rings, Jackson remade King Kong in 2005, turning parts of Wellington into New York City for the film then adapted The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold into a film in 2009.
A scene from Peter Jackson's documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old.
More recently, Jackson has restored and transformed rare and previously unusable footage into documentaries, like They Shall Not Grow Old in 2018, using footage from World War I.
