A 'King Kong' Prequel On the Way

A prequel to King Kong has been given new life by Spirit Pictures, which recently acquired the rights to the book, Kong: King of Skull Island, written by Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland. The book was published a few years ago, when Peter Jackson was working on his King Kong, although it is apparently based on an idea Ray Harryhausen had decades ago. The new film, which will feature many more enormous creatures than just Kong, has received the blessing of the estate of Merian Cooper, director of the original King Kong. Spirit's Steve Iles says the project will be developed as a motion capture animated film, a la Beowulf, and that several tie-ins - like graphic novels and video games - are being conceptualized. The book delves not only with the past on Skull Island, but does so 25 years after the events of the first movie, when the son of showman Carl Denham returns to the island to find out more about the story. Variety says that Spirit Pictures will also produce another unfinished Harryhausen idea called War Eagles. That unproduced film, which coincidentally enough was developed with Merian Cooper, is about a fighter pilot who crashes in the arctic only to find a lost civilization thriving there. Spirit will produce the motion capture Kong: King of Skull Island at its own facility but will need to find a capable distributor to make that kind of financial burden possible and perhaps even potentially profitable.