After a preview screening of District 9 -- by the way, make plans to go see that, right now. Seriously, stop what you're doing and clear your calendar on August 14 when the film opens -- we spent a couple of hours sitting down with Peter Jackson to talk about District 9, Halo The Hobbit, The Lovely Bones, and pretty much everything else he's working on. Plus, you won't believe what he does in his spare time. Suffice it to say, he's not cruising a luxury yacht around the world and eating caviar all day.

Read on beyond the jump for the full writeup of the event (which we were sadly not allowed to videotape), and to get all the goods. He also showed us four and a half minutes of footage from The Lovely Bones, which looks incredible. The trailer for that will be on iTunes on August 6th, and then will be playing in theaters in front of Julie & Julia. Jump through for all things Peter Jackson, including an update on all of his projects, and a rundown of his hobbies.

I think it might be easier if I break this down into bite-sized chunks, because it was a complete wealth of information that was firehosed on us in the course of one evening. We'd come over directly from a screening of District 9, and you can read impressions on that movie right here.


Halo

According to Jackson, the Halo video game movie adaptation died because of politics between Universal and Fox, who were both co-funding the project. It wasn't a disagreement over budget or about first-time director Neill Blomkamp, as was reported, but studio politics as usual. "It was almost like losing a member of the family ... well, not that bad, but you've emotionally committed to a movie, and giving it your heart and soul. And you feel terrible about it."

When the project was scrapped, Jackson and company did not want to lose Blomkamp, who they felt was a real prodigy, and they ended up building the feature film District 9 out of Blomkamp's short film Alive in Joburg. "District 9 definitely grew out of Alive in Joburg," Jackson said, "Although we had to develop the character further, sort of from the ground up." Also scrapped in the process was Jackson's planned Halo: Chronicles video game, which was announced back in 2006 and then never heard about again.

District 9

The movie had quite a pre-greenlight process: with Jackson and crew put together a graphic novel-style presentation package for studios, and they funded the first six months of pre-production by themselves. Director Neil Blomkamp went to South Africa and shot a 10-minute test with Blomkamp's school friend Sharlto Copley to help convince Jackson and team to hire him as the lead actor. Especially since he's never really acted before.

They turned the footage over the QED International who took the project out to film markets, and eventually sold most of the distribution rights to Sony. They shot it as a low-budget independent film, although Jackson himself remarked, "We live in a weird world where people say $30 million dollars is not a lot of money." They shot the film in South Africa to keep the costs as low as possible, "We put all the money on the screen."

An effects company in Vancouver called Image Engine did all the alien shots, because Weta Digital was busy working on Avatar and didn't have the capacity to be able to take on this film. However, they came in near the end of filming and worked on the shots of the spaceship. "I kept encouraging Neill to put more and more splatter in it, because we knew we were going for an R rating."

For you future DIY filmmakers out there, they filmed the entire movie on a Red camera. "It's a camera that almost anyone can afford to buy or rent." Jackson himself has been slowly going digital (the Lord of the Rings films were all shot on film), and he's been using the Red camera for pet projects.

The Lovely Bones

Jackson screened 4 1/2 minutes from the movie for us, and it looks simply incredible. We were shown a montage of different scenes that show off the look of the film, including some of the key moments from the novel. The cast (Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Michael Imperioli, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg, and the best thing about The City of Ember, newcomer Saoirse Ronan) turns in terrific performances from what we could see, including Marky Mark, who they cast based on his performance in I Heart Huckabees. The 70's look of the film is straight out of The Ice Storm, although the imagined supernatural worlds of the afterlife are modern-day spectacular.

Stanley Tucci is darn near unrecognizable, which according to Jackson was intentional. "He plays a very, very evil character, a very nasty guy in the film, and I think he was probably afraid of being spat on in public and in malls and such." They looked at episodes of The Partridge Family as part of researching the scenes in the afterlife, because Susie's version of the afterlife is based on her experiences as a 14 year-old in 1973.

Jackson said he cried when he read the novel, and compares working on the film to his experience on Heavenly Creatures. "I felt like doing something that would be hard and very different. You want to keep trying things that you aren't sure if you can do, and this seemed like a very interesting challenge. It's a very personal book." Although they didn't use the entire book, and Jackson himself said it was difficult to adapt, he's happy with the end result. They included Alice Sebold in the development process for the script, and she provided notes. Based on what we saw, audiences and fans of the book will both be satisfied.

The Hobbit

Jackson is currently writing the script for the first of the two planned Hobbit films with Guillermo del Toro, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens. They're about three weeks away from submitting the script to the studio, and they haven't yet put together a budget or submitted anything to cast members for consideration. The film is being directed by Guillermo del Toro, while Jackson himself is taking a hands-off approach to producing:

"I really don't want to be looking over the shoulder of the director. One of the reasons I wanted to produce the movie and not direct it is because I didn't want to compete against myself. I thought I'd given everything I could to The Lord of the Rings, and I'd be competing against myself with The Hobbit: how did I shoot Hobbiton the first time, how did I shoot Gandalf coming in through the door. I'd have to look back and do what I did the first time, or not ... the best thing for the project was to find another filmmaker who would do a really great job."

It's no secret that the movie is being split into two halves, and they originally thought about doing The Hobbit as one movie, and then making another film to be a bridge movie between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It almost ended up being a three hour movie, which is why they decided to break it in to two halves. They're going to include a lot of extra narrative for Gandalf, and will include all of the characters, including the 13 dwarves. They won't be introducing material just for the sake of it, "It's not that wise to mess around or muck about with Tolkien lore."

They don't even have a greenlight yet, since the studio is waiting on the script to do a budget breakdown. Then they'll be going out to actors and figuring out how things will work. Once that is finished, they'll start work on the script for part two. They want to bring back any characters that appeared in The Lord of the Rings that are also in The Hobbit by using the same actors.

Tintin

Peter Jackson is pulling producer duties yet again, this time on the Tintin movie series adapation. They've planned to do three films, which are being directed by Steven Spielberg, and the first one The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn comes out in December of 2011. It's had a long development process since Spielberg first optioned the materials in 1983, but now it's finally happening. Tintin is widely popular throughout the world, but is relatively unknown here in the United States.

"I'm not so worried about American audiences being familiar with Tintin. I mean, there's no reason why the film still can't be released and enjoyed just because American audiences don't largely know about Tintin. I mean, original movies are being made all the time. When Star Wars first came out, nobody knew anything about that and it was very successful."

Steven Spielberg is directing the first one, and he's just finished his first cut of the film and I'll be watching it when I get home. Weta Digital is doing the digital effects shots on it, and I'm filling the role as producer. I think we've pencilled in a possible start date for the second Tintin movie in the second half of next year. I have to finish The Hobbit script first, so I'll have to get through that. I'm leaning towards 'The Seven Crystal Balls' or 'Prisoners of the Sun,' but we're not sure yet."

Hobbies:

Jackson has his own company called The Vintage Aviator that is in the business of building full-scale versions of WWI and WWII planes, exactly to their original specifications. Some people collect stamps, others buy luxury yachts, and Jackson build real-life model planes. And he's not even a pilot! I asked him if this obsession came from something in his childhood, and he said "Yes, it comes out of a movie. I saw The Blue Max when I was about 9 or 10 years old, and I absolutely loved that film." He's a self-admitted geek, and is obsessed with WWI, particularly the battles in the air.

The plane obsession has spilled over into Wingnut Wings, a company he created that sells plastic scale models of the planes and soldiers. He's also filmed a Cinemascope, three camera / three screens project called "Over the Front" for the Australian War Memorial museum in Canberra, and it screens there every hour on the hour. They did this using three Red cameras that were slaved together to achieve the Cinemascope look.

Besides "Over the Front," Jackson sometimes assembles teams to shoot footage for short films, and put together an intriguing short that he showed us called "Crossing the Line." It's set in WWI and has the same production values as a movie like King Kong or The Fellowship of the Rings, and was done as a camera test. Amazing stuff that might never be seen in a theater.

He also showed us shorts bits from the remake of The Dam Busters he's working on. The original film came out in 1955, and takes place in a WWII setting. It's based on the true story of the RAF's 617th Squadron that would bomb Germany's dams in an effort to hinder the Reich's war machine. Jackson is just waiting to finish another draft of the script before that moves forward. He's thinking about shooting it in 3-D, which is why he's been playing with the technology.

He loves audio books: "Every time I try to read a book at night in bed, I fall asleep in minutes. I just can't read a book anymore, which is a terrifying thing. I play audiobooks in the car, and it's fantastic." He's currently involved with the Temeraire series of books which they've optioned. They are set in Napoleonic times, where there was an army and a nacy, but in this story there is an air force as well, and dragons. Fantasy meets Napoleonic warfare. Sounds good to me.