Do we like Peter Jackson?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and plenty of real giving, with two contested stains: the Hobbit union fight and the Weinstein-era casting.
Jackson was born in 1961 in Pukerua Bay, near Wellington, and had no formal film training. He started on a Super 8 camera, then made the splatter comedies Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles. Heavenly Creatures (1994) got him an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. Then came the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Return of the King won 11 Oscars, including Best Director.
The ugliest chapter is the 2010 Hobbit stoush. The actors' union NZ Actors' Equity wanted a collective agreement, and Jackson told ministers it was really an Australian union trying to take over New Zealand's film industry for its own political and financial gain. Documents released in 2013 show the production was threatening to move offshore, and the government changed labour law and put up $56 million. Jackson and Walsh said they'd do it again to keep the work at home. The union's side isn't in that report, so where you land depends on whether you read it as protecting local crews or as squashing workers.
In 2017, at the height of the Weinstein fallout, Jackson told Stuff that Miramax had warned him and Fran Walsh off Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, calling them a nightmare to work with. He said it was very likely a Miramax smear campaign. He said they apologised if they were unwitting accomplices in harming the actresses' careers. A Weinstein spokesperson said Miramax had no input into casting. Sorvino publicly thanked Jackson for being honest.
There was also a 2012 PETA claim of up to 27 animal deaths during Hobbit production. Jackson and the producers said their investigation found no evidence for the hobbled-horse claim. They said the new allegations came from two wranglers fired more than a year earlier. A production spokesman did concede that some animals died on the farm housing the animals, and that two horse deaths were avoidable. The American Humane Association said none died on set, but that off-set deaths were unacceptable.
On the harm check, the record is thin but clean. We found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ or trans people, no vaccine or climate claims, and no grievance streak. His own words on AI are mixed: he said he thinks it is “going to destroy the world”, but he doesn't dislike it in film. Recent work is mainstream, and he's producing the Gollum film with Andy Serkis directing. Honestly, we found nothing from him on trans issues either way, so that's a gap rather than a tick.
The recent news is a victory lap. Elijah Wood presented him with the honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes' opening night, and Jackson said he wasn't a “Palme d'Or sorta guy”. He confirmed he's writing a Tintin sequel with Fran Walsh that begins where the last film ends. He's also stepping back from Gollum because he reckons Serkis knows the character best.