Why has Peter Jackson not dared to touch fiction for 12 years?

The director explains this in an introductory video which precedes the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

It’s already been twelve years since Peter Jackson last directed a fiction film. From The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armiesthe New Zealand filmmaker took refuge in the documentary, with For the fallen soldiers or the fabulous series The Beatles: Get Back on Disney+. Why this unexpected break on his part, he who until now had never let more than four years pass between two feature films? We finally have the explanation: in a video projected before the re-release sessions of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (via World of Real), Jackson says the sudden death of his cinematographer, Andrew Lesnie, left him deeply devastated:

“ It was a terrible blow for me to lose Andrew. After that, I made a documentary using old footage, and then I made a documentary about the Beatles, using archive footage that they had shot. And looking back, I realize that I avoided making fiction films, because I would have had to work with someone else who wasn’t Andrew. I think his death changed my creative path. The result was that for 11 or 12 years, I didn’t make a fiction film, because that would have required me to build a relationship with another director of photography. »

Lesnie had worked with him since the first Lord of the Rings. Together, they had also filmed King Kong, Lovely Bones and the trilogy The Hobbit. “ When Andrew arrived to shoot The Fellowship of the RingI had never met him before. He stayed. It became a partnership. The relationship between a director and his cinematographer is quite intense. We bickered and argued about things. I’m an only child, and I said to myself: “Andrew is like a brother to me now (…)”, and then he had a huge heart attack and died. »

Peter Jackson seems to be slowly recovering from the loss of his friend and is not saying no to a return to fiction: “ I will, yes, and the day when I do is getting closer, but it clearly took me a long time to get here. »