Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the 456th episode of Awards Chatter, the Hollywood

Reporter's Awards podcast, I'm the host Scott Feinberg, and my guest today is one of the

most talented and frankly balsiest filmmakers of our time.

The most famous living New Zealander, he is a writer, director and producer whose films

many made in collaboration with his life partner Fran Walsh, include 1994's Heavenly

Creatures, the landmark Lord of the Rings trilogy spending 2001 through 2003, the 2005 remake

of King Kong, the Hobbit trilogy spending 2012 through 2014, the feature length 2018

documentary they shall not grow old, and most recently the 2022 Disney Plus documentary

series The Beatles Get Back, which draws upon 57 hours of footage and 140 hours of audio,

most of it never before seen or heard, to chronicle the 22 days leading up to the Fab Four's

final public performance in January of 1969.

Anominee for Nine Oscars, three of which resulted in wins, and the winner of four Bafta Awards,

a Critics Choice Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Director's Guild Award, and two producers

Guild Awards, he is now nominated for an Emmy for Best Directing for a Documentary

or Nonfiction Program for The Beatles Get Back, which itself is nominated for Best Documentary

or Nonfiction Series, Sir Peter Jackson.

Over the course of our conversation, the 60-year-old and I discussed how a kid from Wellington

fell in love with the movies and began making films of his own, many from the earliest days

with a focus on visual effects.

How a filmmaker who broke into the business making splatter horror films and whose only

studio film before The Lord of the Rings had been a box office flop came to be entrusted

with that project's not one but three very expensive films, why he has in recent years

...