We recently heard that director Jordan Vogt-Roberts was aiming to deliver the biggest iteration of King Kong we've ever seen with his film KONG: SKULL ISLAND, and that's an aspect of his version of the giant ape he continues to hype in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. He even lists the heights of previous Kongs while saying that his is "much larger".
Why so much focus on the size? The director explains: "The thing that most interested me was, how big do you need to make [Kong], so that when someone lands on this island and doesn’t believe in the idea of myth, the idea of wonder – when we live in a world of social and civil unrest, and everything is crumbling around us, and technology and facts are taking over – how big does this creature need to be, so that when you stand on the ground and you look up at it, the only thing that can go through your mind is: ‘That’s a god.’"
The bigger size of Vogt-Roberts' apes is evident in the new image from the film that EW got an exclusive look at, showing Tom Hiddleston (as an ex-SAS tracker) and Brie Larson (as a war photographer "who’s seen all sorts of terrible, terrible things") standing among the remains of a fallen ape, its skull the size of several people.
We've seen this skull before, in spy pics from the set, but at the time it was pink. It looks much better finished.
Written by John Gatins, Dan Gilroy, Derek Connolly, and Max Borenstein, KONG: SKULL ISLAND
is about a man who travels to the mythical island and home of the king of the apes. A team of explorers ventures inside what they find to be a treacherous island. The story is said to honor the King Kong lore but in a different time period.
Vogt-Roberts confirmed that time period is the 1970s, "a time where it was believable that we could still be confronted with myth. And there was still unknown in the world." The journey to Skull Island in his film begins when the island is discovered by the then-recently launched NASA Landsat satellite program.
In addition to Hiddleston and Larson, KONG: SKULL ISLAND stars Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly, Tom Wilkinson, Thomas Mann, John Ortiz, Shea Whigham, Will Brittain, Corey Hawkins, and Jason Mitchell.
The film is set to reach theatres on March 10, 2017.