King Kong (1976 film)

After moving his production company to Beverly Hills, De Laurentiis first met with screenwriter Lorenzo Semple, Jr., who at the time was writing Three Days of the Condor. Impressed with his work on the film, De Laurentiis contacted Semple about writing King Kong, to which Semple immediately signed on. During their collaboration on the project, De Laurentiis already had two ideas in mind—that the film would set in present-day and the climax would set on top of the newly constructed World Trade Center.[11]

Because of the risen sophistication in audiences' tastes since the original film, Semple sought to maintain a realistic tone, but infuse the script with a sly, ironic sense of humor that the audiences could laugh at. Having settled on the mood, Semple retained the basic plotline and set pieces from the original film, but updated and reworked other elements of the story. Inspired by the then-ongoing energy crisis and a suggestion from his friend Jerry Brick, Semple changed the expedition to being mounted by Petrox Corporation, a giant petroleum conglomerate which suspected that Kong's island has unrefined oil reserves. In its original story outline, Petrox would discover Kong's island from a map hidden in the secret archives at the Vatican Library.[12]

In a notable departure from the original film, Semple dropped the dinosaurs that are present with Kong on the island. The reasons for the dropped subplot was due to the increased attention on Kong and Dwan's love story and financial reasons as De Laurentiis did not want to use stop-motion animation in the film. Nevertheless, a giant boa constrictor was incorporated into the film.[12]

A fast writer, Semple completed a forty-page outline within a few days and delivered it in August 1975. While De Laurentiis was pleased with Semple's outline, he expressed displeasure with the Vatican Library subplot, which was immediately dropped. It would later be replaced with Petrox discovering the island through obtained classified photos taken by a United States spy satellite.[13] Within a month, the 140-page first draft incorporated the character of Dwan (who according to the script was originally named Dawn until she switched the two middle letters to make it more memorable), the updated rendition of Ann Darrow from the 1933 film. For its second draft, the script was reduced to 110 pages.[14] The final draft was completed by December 1975.[15]

Meryl Streep has said that she was considered for the role of Dawn, but was deemed too unattractive by producer Dino De Laurentiis.[16][17] Dwan was also proposed to Barbra Streisand but she turned it down.[18] The role eventually went to the unknown Jessica Lange,[19] then a New York fashion model with no prior acting experience.[20]

Carlo Rambaldi (left) and Rick Baker (right) were both instrumental in the creation of Kong with Baker creating and performing in the suits, while Rambaldi created full-sized mechanical arms and legs. A 40-foot (12 meters) animatronic Kong was also built, meant to be the centerpiece of the movie, but it was barely used due to technical issues.[21]

De Laurentiis first approached Roman Polanski to direct the picture,[22] but he wasn't interested. De Laurentiis's next choice was director John Guillermin who had just finished directing The Towering Inferno (1974).[13] Guillermin had been developing a version of The Hurricane when offered the job of King Kong.[23]

Guillermin, who was known to have had outbursts from time to time on the set, got into a public shouting match with executive producer Federico De Laurentiis (son of producer Dino De Laurentiis). After the incident, De Laurentiis was reported to have threatened to fire Guillermin if he did not start treating the cast and crew better.[24]

As part of the $16 million budget, De Laurentiis had his mind set on building a full-scale animatronic Kong.[25] Italian special effect artist Carlo Rambaldi designed and built the mechanical Kong, which was 40 ft (12.2 m) tall and weighed 61/2 tons;[26] he would later compare building it to "the United States space program" during the race to the moon.[25] Glen Robinson oversaw the construction of Kong and the amalgam of aluminium, latex, horse tails and hydraulics.[25] Rambaldi had also to devise separate mechanical hands with working fingers, which could be used to scoop up Jessica Lange in close-ups, and a man-sized ape suit for long shots.[25] For the ape suit, Rambaldi collaborated with Rick Baker, who also wore it during the filming.[25] According to Bahrenburg, five different masks were created by Rambaldi to convey various emotions.[27] Separate masks were necessary, as there were too many cables and mechanics required for all the expressions to fit in one single mask.[28] To complete the look of a gorilla, Baker wore contact lenses so his eyes would resemble those of a gorilla.[27]

Rambaldi's giant mechanical Kong cost £500,000 to create.[29] Despite months of preparation, the final device proved to be impossible to operate convincingly, and during the August 1976 filming of Kong's escape in New York, a hydraulic pipe inside the gorilla burst. As a result, it is only seen in a series of brief shots totaling less than 15 seconds, and the ape suit was used in most of the filming.

Baker was extremely disappointed in the final suit, which he felt was not at all convincing.[30] He gives all the credit for its passable appearance to cinematographer Richard H. Kline. The only time that the collaboration of Baker and Rambaldi went smoothly was during the design of the mechanical Kong mask. Baker's design and Rambaldi's cable work combined to give Kong's face a wide range of expression that was responsible for much of the film's emotional impact. Baker gave much of the credit for its effectiveness to Rambaldi and his mechanics.

To film the scene where the Petrox Explorer finds Dwan in the life raft, Jessica Lange spent hours in a rubber raft in the freezing cold, drenched and wearing only a slinky black dress. Shooting of this scene took place in the channel between Los Angeles and Catalina Island during the last week in January 1976.

On one of the nights of filming Kong's death at the World Trade Center, over 30,000 people showed up at the site to be extras for the scene. Although the crowd was well behaved, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (owner of the World Trade Center complex) became concerned that the weight of so many people would cause the plaza to collapse, and ordered the producers to shut down the filming. However, the film makers had already got the shot they wanted of the large crowd rushing toward Kong's body. They returned to the site days later to finish filming the scene, with a much smaller crowd of paid extras.[31]

The roar used for Kong was taken from the film The Lost World (1960).

The film opened on December 17, 1976 in 974 theaters in the United States and Canada and was in 2,200 theaters worldwide on or immediately after December 17.[34]

NBC bought the rights to air the movie from De Laurentiis for $19.5 million, which was the highest amount any network had ever paid for a film at that time. When King Kong made its television debut over two nights in September 1978, around 45 minutes of extra footage was inserted to make the film longer, and it had some added or replaced music cues.[35] Additionally, to obtain a lower, family-friendly TV rating, overtly violent or sexual scenes in the theatrical version were trimmed down or replaced with less explicit takes, and all swearing or potentially offensive language was removed.[36][37] Further broadcasts of the extended version followed in November 1980 and March 1983.

The theatrical version of the film has been released numerous times worldwide on all known home video formats. Of the DVDs, only a few European editions feature any notable extras; these include a 2005 "Making Kong" featurette (22:20) and up to 10 deleted scenes from the extended TV version (16:10).[38] On May 11, 2021, the movie was released to Blu-ray in the United States and Canada courtesy of Shout! Factory-owned brand Scream Factory. The release includes both the theatrical and extended TV cuts.[39]

King Kong did not match Laurentiis' or studio expectations at the box office. Laurentiis claimed that the film would outgross the previous year's Jaws[34] and Paramount expected it to gross $150 million.[40] Despite the perceived failure, the film was highly profitable, earning back over triple its budget.

In the United States and Canada, King Kong opened at number one at the box office grossing $7,023,921 in its opening weekend which was Paramount's biggest opening weekend at that time, and set the record for a December opening.[41][42][43] However, it just failed to surpass the opening weekend set by Jaws of $7,061,053, despite being in double the number of theaters. Worldwide, it grossed $26 million within ten days from 1,500 of the 2,200 theaters it had opened in, including $18 million from the United States and Canada (compared to Jaws' $21 million in the United States and Canada for the same period).[34] The film went on to gross $52 million in the United States and Canada,[1] and just over $90 million worldwide.[44] It was the fourth-highest-grossing film released in 1976 in the United States,[45] and the third-highest-grossing film released in 1976 worldwide.[46] As it was a year end release grossing the majority of its total in 1977, the film was included on Variety's chart of the top domestic (U.S. and Canada) moneymakers of 1977 where it ended up at fifth place.[47]

Pauline Kael from The New Yorker praised the film, noting the "movie is a romantic adventure fantasy—colossal, silly, touching, a marvelous Classics Comics movie (and for the whole family). This new Kong doesn't have the magical primeval imagery of the first King Kong, in 1933, and it doesn't have the Gustave Doré fable atmosphere, but it's a happier, livelier entertainment. The first Kong was a stunt film that was trying to awe you, and its lewd underlay had a carnival hucksterism that made you feel a little queasy. This new Kong isn't a horror movie—it's an absurdist love story."[48] Richard Schickel from Time wrote that "The special effects are marvelous, the good-humored script is comic-bookish without being excessively campy, and there are two excellent performances" from Charles Grodin and Kong.[49] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote that the film is "one of the most successful remakes in the brief (but remake-blotched) history of motion pictures. Faithful in substantial degree not only to the letter but also the spirit of the 1933 classic for RKO, this new version neatly balances superb special effects with solid dramatic credibility."[50]

Vincent Canby, reviewing for The New York Times, claimed the movie was "inoffensive, uncomplicated fun, as well as a dazzling display of what special-effects people can do when commissioned to construct a 40-foot-tall ape who can walk, make fondling gestures, and smiles a lot." However, he was critical of the use of the World Trade Center instead of the Empire State Building during the climax, but he praised the performances by Bridges and Grodin and the special effects creation of Kong.[51] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "a spectacular film" that "for all its monumental scale retains the essential, sincere and simple charm of the beauty and the beast story."[52] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune had a mixed reaction, giving the film two-and-a-half stars out of four as he wrote, "The original 'Kong' took itself seriously; and so, even now, 43 years later, do we. But the kidding around in the new film, though frequently amusing, knocks down the myth its special effects staff has so earnestly tried to build."[53] Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the remake "moves along reasonably well as a half-jokey, half-serious contemporary 'reading' of its predecessor; as an accomplishment in horror and fantasy adventure, it does not measure up to even the small toe of the original."[54]

The movie's success helped launch the career of Jessica Lange, although she reportedly received some negative publicity regarding her debut performance that, according to film reviewer Marshall Fine, "almost destroyed her career".[55] Although Lange won the Golden Globe Award for Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture – Female for Kong, she did not appear in another film for three years and spent that time training intensively in acting.[56]

Critical responses to King Kong continue to be mixed. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 52% based on 46 reviews with an average rating of 4.9/10. The critical consensus reads that "King Kong represents a significant visual upgrade over the original, but falls short of its classic predecessor in virtually every other respect."[57] Metacritic, another aggregator, sampled 11 critcs and calculated a weighted average score of 61 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[58]

The film received three Academy Award nominations and won one.

• Winner Best Visual Effects (Carlo Rambaldi, Glen Robinson and Frank Van der Veer), shared with Logan's Run (1976).[59]
• Nominee Best Cinematography (Richard H. Kline)
• Nominee Best Sound (Harry W. Tetrick, William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin and Jack Solomon).[60]

Before Michael Eisner pitched the idea of a remake of King Kong to Barry Diller, he had earlier mentioned the idea to Sidney Sheinberg, the CEO and president of MCA Inc./Universal Pictures. A short time later, Universal decided to purchase the property as an opportunity to showcase its new sound system technology, Sensurround, which had debuted with the disaster film Earthquake, for Kong's roars. On April 5, 1975, Daniel O'Shea, a semi-retired attorney for RKO-General, had arranged meetings with Arnold Stane, attorney for MCA/Universal, and De Laurentiis and Sidewater for the film rights to King Kong. Neither side knew that a rival studio was also negotiating with RKO-General. Stane had negotiated for Universal an offer of $200,000 plus 5 percent of the film's net profit. In contrast, De Laurentiis offered $200,000 plus 3 percent of the film's gross—and 10 percent if the film recouped two and a half its negative cost. In May 1975, the film rights were granted to De Laurentiis.[6]

In the wake of the agreement, Shane claimed that O'Shea had verbally accepted Universal's offer, although no official paperwork was signed. O'Shea contested, "I did not make any agreement written or oral ... never told him we had an agreement, nor words to that effect ... never told him that I had the authority ... I am not an employee, agent, or officer at RKO."[6] A few days later, Universal filed suit against De Laurentiis and RKO-General in Los Angeles Superior Court for $25 million on charges of breach of contract, fraud, and intentional interference with advantageous business relations. In October 1975, Universal, which was in pre-production with its own remake with Hunt Stromberg, Jr. as producer and Joseph Sargent as director, filed suit in a federal district court arguing that the story's "basic ingredients" were public domain.[8] Universal had claimed that its remake was based on the two-part serialization by Edgar Wallace and a novelization by Delos W. Lovelace adapted from the screenplay that had been published shortly before the film's release in 1933.[6]

Universal started production on The Legend of King Kong on January 5, 1976, with Bo Goldman writing the screenplay based on the novelization by Lovelace.[61] On November 20, RKO-General countersued Universal for $5 million alleging that The Legend of King Kong was an infringement on their copyright, and asked the court to prevent any "announcements, representations, and statements" on their proposed film. On December 4, De Laurentiis countersued for $90 million with charges of copyright infringement and "unfair competition".[62] In January 1976, both studios agreed to withdraw their legal suits filed against each other. Universal agreed to cancel The Legend of King Kong, but intended to proceed with a remake sometime in the future on the condition that it release at least eighteen months after De Laurentiis's remake.[63][64] In September 1976, a federal judge ruled in favor of Universal that Lovelace's novelization had fallen into public domain, which cleared the studio to produce a remake.[65] Universal later produced a remake, also titled King Kong, in 2005.