Bones fleshed out despite doubts

KENT BLECHYNDEN/ The Dominion Post

HOBBIT FORMING: The Lovely Bones and The Hobbit screenwriter Philippa Boyens at a writers talk at Te Papa.

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Oscar-winning Kiwi screenwriter Philippa Boyens has revealed that she introduced The Lovely Bones to Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, but she did not believe the novel could be turned into a film.

It was only after Walsh and Jackson had read the book and both believed it could be a film that Boyens, who co-wrote The Lord of the Rings and King Kong with the couple, changed her mind.

Boyens discussed details about The Lovely Bones and The Hobbit, the script for which she is also co-writing, at a writers talk at Te Papa yesterday just hours before she was to watch a final cut of the film, to be released in December.

More than 200 people attended the talk, the largest to attend Victoria University's Writers on Monday series.

Boyens said she read The Lovely Bones while working on The Lord of the Rings. "I loved the book [but] I absolutely didn't think it would make a film. I truly didn't."

But Walsh had a different reaction after reading it, Boyens said.

"Usually it's Pete going 'right'. But this one it was Fran, first and foremost. She said, 'I wonder who's got it? [the rights].' She could understand how we could tackle this around the table and Pete could understand it."

Boyens, co-producer of sci-fi movie District 9 which is No 1 at the New Zealand box office, said they learned that The Lovely Bones film rights were available, but that many people wanted them.

She and Walsh talked by phone with the American author, Alice Sebold, to get her approval.

They discovered Sebold's husband, writer Glen David Gold, was a big fan of Jackson's early films.

"[That] goes a long way. It's very funny the people that come out of the woodwork and say 'Bad Taste - loved that movie'."

Boyens said The Lovely Bones will be about two hours long, about an hour shorter than the Rings trilogy and King Kong because the story, in places, was intense.

She said The Lovely Bones, the outcome of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in rural Pennsylvania, was "a very different film" because of its subject matter, which included the victim, played by Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, viewing events from heaven.

"Someone called it 'an emotional thriller'. That was great. That felt good."

Boyens said she was still working on the Hobbit script with Jackson, Walsh and director Guillermo del Toro.

Despite it being six years since The Lord of the Rings, she had not found it difficult to revisit Middle-earth.

"At first it was 'Oh, wizards, elves, orcs'. [But] it was surprisingly easy."

Boyens said the biggest challenge facing The Hobbit writers was that the book is episodic, which the two-part film would not be.