Peter Jackson's The Dam Busters remake could be a 10-part series, says director Christian Rivers
The 'Mortal Engines' filmmaker tells The Independent that the remake may explore the story in a series akin to 'Band of Brothers'
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Your support makes all the difference.Peter Jackson has been working on a remake of The Dam Busters for over a decade, yet project after project interfered with filming.
In 2010, he was forced to take the reins on The Hobbit after director Guillermo Del Toro quit the production. Then Mortal Engines and They Shall Not Grow Old came along – the former of which Jackson produced, while Christian Rivers directed.
Despite the delay, the Lord of the Rings filmmaker has promised to get the project back up and running. And speaking to The Independent, Rivers – who is set to direct The Dam Busters – said that work is underway on convincing Jackson to turn the film into a TV series.
“I’m still trying to convince Pete that we need to make The Dam Busters as a 10-part TV show,” Rivers said. ”I think he wants to do that, but we’ll see.”
Elaborating on why the film would make for a good prestige series, Rivers continued: “There’s so much depth in the characters, each one could have their own story. And 10 episodes, people accept that format much more now thanks to somewhere like HBO, which did Band of Brothers and The Pacific.”
Jackson has previously spoken about how the original 1955 cinematic recreation of Operation Chastise, an attack on German dams by a Royal Air Force squadron during the Second World War, gave a “romanticised” version of events.
“It’s just a great story. It’s always been a great story,” he told The Telegraph. ”But it’s an even greater story now than it was in 1955 because back then there was still so much of the story that was under the Official Secrets Act.
“They couldn’t show the bomb spinning because the fact that they applied backspin to the bomb to make it jump on the water was still a state secret.
“You see some of that in the original movie but there’s a lot more of that that took place and that’s as much of an interesting story as the actual raid itself.”
Jackson recently spoke to The Independent about Mortal Engines and The Hobbit, saying that taking on the Tolkien adaptation was a “responsibility” after Del Toro dropped out.
“Because we had spent a lot of money with Warner Bros and Guillermo had been our idea, we just felt a responsibility to not go with someone else [to direct] who may decide to leave,” he said.
“And I was left with virtually no prep time. I had never gone into a film without storyboards, animatic, pre-visuals. I was thinking on the seat of my pants every single day, which makes you stay quite tough. At least I had enough experience to get through. But the onus was on me.”
Read the full interview here; Mortal Engine is in cinemas now.
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