King Kong (franchise)

• 1. Introduction

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  King Kong earned $90,000 in its first four days in 1933, even though the Great Depression had emptied most Americans' pockets. The giant ape at the center of that film has since carried an entire franchise. It now spans thirteen films, along with television series, novels, comic books, video games and attractions.

  Kong lives on a primordial island crowded with prehistoric creatures. On screen he is usually a benevolent hero, though a violent one at times. Studios in Hollywood and Tokyo have licensed him, fought over him and borrowed from him, so ownership of the films varies from one to the next.

  How did one monster from one film survive several long gaps and keep coming back? What did it take for rival studios to share, or fight over, a single ape? And why did directors keep returning to a creature whose first film was made with models and stop motion animation?

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• 2. The Original Film

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  On the 2nd of March 1933, RKO Radio Pictures released King Kong, co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Cooper was the creator of the character. The film grossed $10 million, and its re-release in 1952 brought in another $2.5 million.

  The effects animator Willis H. O'Brien made the ape move. He is largely credited with pioneering stop motion as a film medium, and the technique left a lasting mark on the industry worldwide. Critics and journalists regard the film as a masterpiece and a signature piece of American cinema. They often name it among the greatest monster films ever made, and the National Film Registry selected it for preservation.

  Nine months after the debut came a sequel, Son of Kong. RKO produced and owned both films. Warner Bros. inherited them in 1996 through Turner Entertainment Co. In the decades between Kong revivals, the original also inspired other genre films, including Mighty Joe Young, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, Mothra and Jurassic Park.

  Three decades after the first film, O'Brien himself pitched a very different idea for bringing Kong back, this time in color.

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• 3. Kong Meets Godzilla

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  In the early 1960s, O'Brien painted watercolor illustrations and drew sketches for a story called King Kong vs. Frankenstein. He hoped the artwork would stir interest in a color production. RKO attorney Daniel O'Shea liked the pitch. He gave O'Brien permission to use the character and introduced him to an independent producer, John Beck.

  Beck hired George Worthing Yates to turn the outline into a screenplay, retitled King Kong vs. Prometheus in a nod to Mary Shelley's novel. Hollywood studios and directors would not bite. So Beck went abroad and struck a deal with Toho Co., Ltd., the makers of Godzilla in 1954.

  Toho cared more about licensing Kong from RKO and Beck than about O'Brien's story. Frankenstein, or Prometheus, was swapped out for Godzilla, and the project became King Kong vs. Godzilla. Beck made the deal without O'Brien's knowledge or consent. O'Brien's representative prepared a lawsuit, but it was dropped because of attorney fees. O'Brien died on the 8th of November 1962.

  Toho released the film in Japan on the 11th of August 1962. Instead of stop motion, it relied on actors in suits and miniature sets, a style known as tokusatsu. Shoichi Hirose played Kong, and Haruo Nakajima played Godzilla. The film sold 11.2 million tickets in its first run. It became the second-highest-grossing Japanese-produced film in history at that point and was Toho's second-biggest release.

  Because Toho wanted Kong so badly, Beck kept exclusive distribution rights for the United States, Canada, Alaska, the United Kingdom and Israel. Toho kept the Far East. Beck then ordered a heavily localized cut with new footage starring American actors. He replaced Akira Ifukube's score with stock music from Universal Pictures' library, and Universal International bought the result and held its copyright for 40 years.

  That American version reached theaters on the 26th of June 1963. The Japanese cut stayed officially unavailable outside Japan until 2019, when The Criterion Collection issued both versions on Blu-ray.

  By September 1966, a children's cartoon had sent Kong in yet another direction.

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• 4. Cartoons and Machines

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  In September 1966, The King Kong Show premiered on ABC. The American studio Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment had acquired rights from RKO to make an animated series and a new live-action film. It produced the series with the Japanese studio Toei Animation.

  Rankin/Bass also agreed with Toho to co-produce a film tied to the series. Toho submitted a script titled Operation Robinson Crusoe: King Kong vs. Ebirah, but Rankin/Bass vetoed it. Toho went ahead alone, replaced Kong with Godzilla and turned the project into Ebirah, Horror of the Deep.

  That same month, Toho sent Rankin/Bass a synopsis for King Kong Escapes, loosely drawn from the cartoon. Some leftovers from the rejected script survived: over-the-top villains from an unnamed nation, illegal production of fuel for nuclear weapons, and scenes in the South Seas. Filming began in spring 1967, with Haruo Nakajima back in the suit. Toho released the film in Japan on the 22nd of July 1967. It did not match the earlier Godzilla crossover at the box office. Universal released an English dub in the United States the following year and again kept the American copyright for 40 years.

  The cartoon also left behind Mechani-Kong, a cyborg double of the ape. In 1993, Toho considered remaking King Kong vs. Godzilla because it was their most successful Godzilla and Kong film. Winning back the Kong rights looked difficult. Effects director Kōichi Kawakita proposed an idea inspired by Fantastic Voyage, in which Mechani-Kong would inject people into Godzilla's body to fight the beast from within. Toho backed away because the cyborg looked too much like Kong and would still require the rights. Mechagodzilla took its place, and the film became Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II.

  Back in America, in December 1974, a television executive named Michael Eisner sat down to watch the 1933 film, and a new battle over rights began.

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• 5. The 1976 Remake

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  Producer Dino De Laurentiis says he got the idea for a remake from a poster of the 1933 film in his daughter's room. Eisner, then a vice president at ABC, makes the same claim about his December 1974 viewing. He mentioned the idea to Sidney Sheinberg, president and CEO of MCA Inc. and Universal Pictures, who passed it to Barry Diller, then president of Paramount Pictures.

  Sheinberg and Diller each began developing a Kong remake without knowing about the other. Diller hired De Laurentiis, while Sheinberg hired Hunt Stromberg Jr. On the 15th of April 1975, Universal's attorney Arnold Shane and De Laurentiis met RKO's Daniel O'Shea separately, each unaware of the other's appointment. Nothing was signed, yet both sides left believing they owned the rights. Paramount signed with RKO the next month. Then it learned that Universal had announced Joseph Sargent as director and Bo Goldman as writer of The Legend of King Kong.

  The studios went to court. Universal claimed a verbal agreement with RKO, demanded $25 million in damages, and argued that Kong was in the public domain because Universal had published a novelization of the story in the 1930s. De Laurentiis countersued for copyright infringement, asked for $90 million and ran ads with the line "There Still is Only One King Kong". In January 1976, he rejected a proposal to share one film that would have used Universal's script and given Universal control of the merchandise. The litigation ended that same month. De Laurentiis agreed to pay Universal an undisclosed percentage for its cancelled film.

  Carlo Rambaldi led the effects team that built a giant hand and a 40 foot robot of Kong, with construction overseen by Glen Robinson. Like the Toho films, the production also used an ape suit, worn by makeup artist Rick Baker. The robot cost roughly $2 million. The hand and suit added $400,000, and a full-sized static Kong made of styrofoam, used in one scene, cost $300,000.

  The release date was fixed for December 1976, and De Laurentiis wanted to beat Universal to theaters. Props and machinery failed, and two full-scale right hands were built by mistake. Director John Guillermin's tyrant-like behavior on set added to the strain. The budget rose to $24 million, with $10 million more for marketing, figures unheard of at the time. Paramount released King Kong on the 17th of December 1976, and it grossed $90 million. Reviews were mixed and often compared it unfavorably with the original, yet it won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, shared with Logan's Run.

  In 1977, De Laurentiis said a sequel would "definitely" be made. The disappointing box office and disputes over who owned the character stalled it. Writer Steven Pressfield called several of the scripts "embarrassing". De Laurentiis was skeptical of a female Kong, but he approved the pitch from Pressfield and Ronald Shusett. In it, Kong lies in a respirator and is revived with an artificial heart. Guillermin returned to direct after financing collapsed on a film of Tai-Pan with Sean Connery. Filming began in Tennessee in April 1986. King Kong Lives opened on the 19th of December 1986 and flopped, grossing $4.7 million in the United States and Canada. Critics panned it.

  In 1995, Universal would turn to a filmmaker it admired for The Frighteners.

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• 6. Peter Jackson's Kong

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  In 1995, Universal Pictures offered Peter Jackson the chance to direct a Kong remake. The studio had been impressed by The Frighteners. Licensing from RKO and Time Warner was no longer a problem, because the character of Kong had fallen into the public domain by then.

  Jackson turned the offer down at first, then reversed himself, fearing the remake would fail under another director. He was attached to film versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but producer Harvey Weinstein was taking too long to secure those rights. To soothe Weinstein's anger, Jackson arranged a co-financing and co-distribution deal with Miramax for Kong. Robert Zemeckis joined as executive producer, and Universal approved a script by Jackson and his wife Fran Walsh. Filming was planned for 1997.

  In January 1997, Universal halted the project. TriStar's Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young, both due in 1998, worried the studio. Mighty Joe Young came from Disney, the parent company of Miramax. The studio cancelled Kong the following month, although Wētā FX and Wētā Workshop had already designed six months of pre-production. Jackson went on to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Years later, he and his collaborator Christian Rivers noticed a similar tone between his unused script and Universal's 1999 remake of The Mummy.

  In early 2003, while Jackson was finishing The Return of the King, Universal asked him to revive Kong. In March 2003, the studio set a 2005 release and hired Philippa Boyens to rewrite the 1996 script. Jackson was unhappy with that draft. In October 2003, he began a new script that hewed closer to the 1933 film.

  It included unused material from James Ashmore Creelman's script for the original, such as the lost spider-pit scene. Delos W. Lovelace's 1932 novelization was another inspiration. Wētā Workshop and Weta Digital began work as soon as The Return of the King was done, and Jackson brought back his Lord of the Rings crew. Filming started in September 2004, with Andy Serkis playing Kong through motion capture.

  Universal released King Kong on the 13th of December 2005 to generally positive reviews, and it appeared on several top ten lists for the year. It earned four Academy Award nominations, for Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Production Design, and won all but the last. Worldwide it grossed about $557 million against a budget of $207 million. Jackson also directed a recreation of the lost spider pit sequence for the 2005 DVD release of the 1933 film.

  Jackson did not consider the story finished. In 2013, he and producer Mary Parent planned a direct sequel.

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• 7. The Monsterverse

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  Legendary Pictures took over that sequel project, called Skull Island, and redeveloped it as a prequel. Jackson and the chosen director, Adam Wingard, dropped out, but Parent stayed. She eventually became Legendary's production chief.

  In July 2014, Legendary announced the film in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con, with Max Borenstein, who wrote Legendary's 2014 Godzilla film, as screenwriter. In September 2014, Jordan Vogt-Roberts was named director, with Tom Hiddleston in the lead. In September 2015, the film, now titled Kong: Skull Island, moved from Universal to Warner Bros. so that the Kong and Godzilla properties would sit under one studio. In October 2015, Legendary announced a shared franchise that would build to Godzilla vs. Kong. In January 2017 it was revealed as the Monsterverse.

  Borenstein drew on Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. His first idea was a war film that began in the Vietnam War and jumped to the present day, which Legendary rejected. His next draft was set in 1917. Hiddleston would lead a rescue mission to find his brother, who had gone to the island seeking a cure-all serum. Vogt-Roberts preferred the Vietnam-era pitch and persuaded Legendary to set the film near the end of that war.

  For Kong's design, Vogt-Roberts returned to the look of the 1933 ape. He wanted it simple and iconic enough for a child to draw, and he wanted Kong to reflect a lonely, morose God. Terry Notary played Kong through performance capture, with Toby Kebbell adding facial work. Notary asked for Serkis' blessing before taking the role. Principal photography ran from October 2015 to March 2016 in Hawaii and Vietnam.

  Kong: Skull Island came out on the 10th of March 2017 to positive reviews. It grossed $566 million worldwide against a budget of $185 million and earned a Best Visual Effects nomination at the 90th Academy Awards. In April 2016, writer and artist Joe DeVito had sued Legendary and Warner Bros. for breach of implied contract. He claimed they took ideas from April 2014 pitch meetings without credit or pay, and he sought $3.5 million.

  In March 2017, Legendary assembled a writers room for Godzilla vs. Kong, led by Terry Rossio, who had co-written an unproduced script for TriStar's Godzilla. Wingard, whom Jackson had approved, was announced as director in May 2017. Filming ran from November 2018 to April 2019 in Hawaii, Australia and Hong Kong. Allan Henry gave Kong his performance capture.

  The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the release. The film opened internationally on the 24th of March 2021 and in the United States a week later, on the 31st of March, in theaters and on HBO Max at the same time. It became the most successful launch item in HBO Max's history until Mortal Kombat overtook it. It grossed $470 million against a break-even point of $330 million, and it was the most pirated film of 2021.

  Legendary announced a sequel in March 2022 and brought Wingard back, with Dan Stevens in the lead. Filming ran from July to November 2022 on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Henry performed both Kong and the Skar King. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire arrived on the 29th of March 2024. In May 2024, Legendary announced Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, written by David Callaham. Wingard could not return because of scheduling conflicts. Grant Sputore, director of I Am Mother, took over, and the film is set for the 26th of March 2027.

  Kong also reached television. In January 2024, he made a brief appearance in the finale of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and the show's second season expands his role.

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• 8. Kong Everywhere

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  The Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine includes a gag in which the characters open a door and find King Kong carrying a woman out of her bed. The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror III" has a segment called "King Homer", with Homer as Kong and Marge in the Ann Darrow role. It ends with King Homer marrying Marge and eating her father. The British comedy series The Goodies made an episode called "Kitten Kong", in which a giant cat named Twinkle knocks over the British Telecom Tower in London. The Dutch resistance fighter Christiaan Lindemans, later arrested on suspicion of betraying secrets to the Nazis, was nicknamed "King Kong" because he was exceptionally tall.

  Musicians returned to Kong again and again. Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention recorded an instrumental called "King Kong" in 1967 for the album Uncle Meat, and Zappa made many later versions. The Kinks put a song of that name on the B-side of their 1969 single "Plastic Man". In 1972, a 550 cm fiberglass statue of Kong was erected in Birmingham, England. ABBA recorded "King Kong Song" for their 1974 album Waterloo, and it appeared as a B-side on two singles.

  In 1983, Daniel Johnston recorded an a cappella retelling of the original film's plot on his cassette Yip/Jump Music. Tom Waits covered it with sound effects in 2004. The band Ookla the Mok wrote "Song of Kong" for their 2001 album Smell No Evil, arguing that Kong and Godzilla should not be roommates.

  Kong has also lived on small screens beyond the films. BKN International's Kong: The Animated Series ran from 2000 to 2001 as a direct sequel to the 1933 film. Its new Kong was cloned from the DNA of the original and a young man named Jason, who could link with the ape through a special device in moments of crisis. Two direct-to-video films followed, in 2005 and 2006. Warner Bros. had already released an animated musical remake, The Mighty Kong, in 1998. It received negative reviews. Netflix's Kong: King of the Apes ran for two seasons starting in 2016, and its animated series Skull Island arrived on the 22nd of June 2023.

  The games began with handheld LCD titles and a 1982 release for the Atari 2600 from Tigervision. Konami released two Japan-only games in 1986 tied to King Kong Lives. Data East planned a pinball machine in 1990 but built only 9 units. In 1992, Nintendo's educational game Mario is Missing included a treasure hunt involving Kong in New York City. In 2022, Kong appeared in Call of Duty: Warzone in an update titled Operation Monarch.

  Still ahead is a live-action series announced in August 2022 for Disney+. It will be co-produced by James Wan's Atomic Monster Productions and written by Stephany Folsom. Based on Cooper's original books and DeVito's new novelizations, it will follow a new Kong in modern times as characters explore the mysteries of his home island.

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