Empire attended the UK launch of the official King Kong game last night, and were fortunate enough to get a few words with Kong co-screenwriter and the game's co-adaptor, the lovely Philippa Boyens.
"I'll be honest with you, initially Peter had to talk me into this," she said of taking on the dual responsibility. "As a mother who was forever trying to get her child to turn the games off, I wasn't very keen. Peter had always said, and I'd heard it before, 'gaming is the way of the future', but I never really believed that until I got involved with actually creating this one. And now I've seen – especially with the new gaming engines that are arriving at the moment - just where it's all going."
Allowing the player to get about in the shoes of Jack Driscoll (played by Adrien Brody in the film), and as Kong himself, the game has been in development for two years, steered by head designer Michel Ancel. It has, not unusually these days, been reshaped in tandem with any changes to the film. "That's exactly the reason Peter got me involved with this so early on," said Boyens. "We went straight into Kong from the end of The Lord Of The Rings, and we almost wrote it on the fly, so we always knew that there were going to be changes – especially to character, but the developers had all of the '30s period references and the concept art to go on."
On a related note, when asked about the rumoured changes to Kong's appearance, the Oscar winner replied "There have only been small changes to things like fur. The tooth is still there; he's still the same, snaggled Kong."
Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game will be available to buy from November 17th, and will be reviewed by Empire soon.