Peter Jackson was paid $20 million to direct this film, the highest salary ever paid to a film director in advance of production.
On April Fools Day 2005, Peter Jackson posted an elaborate practical joke, which he posted on a web diary at www.kongisking.net. He "revealed" that they were already starting production on "King Kong: Son Of Kong" and "King Kong: Into the Wolf's Lair". Both films, supposedly to be released in 2006, contained the principal characters riding Son of Kong, strapping machine guns to his back and fighting Hitler's genetically mutated creatures. The film was going to be produced under the banner of "Big Primate Productions". Peter Jackson has been known to pull pranks of this sort before; see Forgotten Silver (1995) (TV).
The New York set was only four blocks across and one story high; the rest was added digitally.
The Times Square set was built about 20% scaled down from the original. For this and most other New York sets, only the first story was built in full scale. The rest of the scenes were added digitally. Streets were also extended using digital effects, and the number of pedestrians and cars were doubled or even tripled in large scenes, using the same process applied to the battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings films.
Posters for East of Borneo (1931) and The Mummy (1932) appear outside theaters in the New York scenes.
For the New York scene, the few hundred extras used each had three different costumes that they would wear for different exterior scenes.
At one time during production, a many as 100 people were working in the costume department alone.
The "Ancient Proverb" cited by Carl at his premier served as the prologue in the original version of the film.
The insects attacking Jack Driscoll at the canyon bottom are gigantic versions of the Weta, a species native to New Zealand and the namesake of Peter Jackson's production studio.
Considering the film's running time, it could have possibly been longer. According to the book The Making of King Kong, there was a scene written and filmed where Denham, Driscoll and the Venture crew build rafts to cross the swamp, only to be attacked by an aquatic creature (a "Piranhadon"). There was also mention of a scene where Lumpy the cook shoots a large flightless bird.
'Jack Black' has claimed that he did not wear any make-up at all in the entire movie after hearing a false rumor that Clint Eastwood never wears any make-up in his movies. He also wore a hairpiece during filming rather than going through makeup to achieve the '30s hairdo' look.
The digitally-rendered 1933 NY is so detailed that it contained 90,000 separate buildings.
28 copies of Darrow's petticoats were made. Some were clean, some dirty, while others were ripped.
WILHELM SCREAM: During the brontosaur stampede, as a sailor is knocked off a cliff
Howard Shore had written and recorded much of the score for this film, but shortly before release, he departed from the project. Peter Jackson stated that because of "differing creative aspirations" between the two of them, they both thought it best for Shore to be replaced by James Newton Howard, who was given less than two months to write and record new score for the entire film. Yet original promotional posters list that Howard Shore composed the music.
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