617Dambusters

Jackson working on Dam Busters remake
08 May 2006

New Zealand film director Peter Jackson is set to film a remake of the World War II film The Dam Busters, with a budget of almost $NZ300 million dollars, according to a British Sunday newspaper.


The Mail on Sunday yesterday reported Jackson would work on the estimated $NZ293.5 million movie alongside Sir David Frost - who last year bought the rights to Paul Brickhill's 1951 book about 617 Squadron's daring low-level bombing of German dams.

The newspaper said Jackson was a self-confessed war buff who had a lifelong interest in British military history after being inspired by a childhood visit to London's Imperial War Museum.

Jackson owns replicas of two World War I fighters and a tank and spent $NZ146,700 of his own money restoring the only film of Anzac troops at Gallipoli, the newspaper reported.

Jackson recently spent a day filming one of the last surviving Lancaster bombers in preparation for the remake of the much-loved 1954 black-and-white film, which starred Richard Todd as Wing Commander Guy Gibson and Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis, who invented the bouncing bomb.

A source quoted in the paper said Jackson, 44, had met a group of RAF veterans in New Zealand who restored the plane.

"It was clear just how much he knew about warplanes. We believe the footage is to help his special effects team.

"Peter has been in contact with the old crewmen, who are well into their 80s. I believe he is helping to create a memorial to the New Zealand airmen who flew bombers, including those who died in the Dam Busters mission," the unnamed source was quoted in the newspaper.

Codenamed Operation Chastise, the 1943 raid is one of the most famous military operations. Gibson hand-picked crews from other Lancaster squadrons to fly at low level to destroy three heavily protected dams in the industrial Ruhr Valley.

The Mohne and Eder dams were breached using Wallis's extraordinary bouncing bomb. To be effective, the revolving mine had to be released while flying at precisely 220mph, 60ft above the water and 425 yards from a dam.

Jackson was reported to be sending his assistant Matt Dravitski to the annual Dam Busters reunion this month at Petwood Hotel, near Lincoln, which had been 617 Squadron's wartime mess.

Of the 19 Lancasters that took off from nearby RAF Scampton on May 16, 1943, eight failed to return and 56 airmen were killed.

The newspaper said one question remained - What to call Gibson's beloved but now controversially-named dog, Nigger.

Sir David Frost said "The word Nigger is not ideal for the modern world. But the real challenge is to make the film as good as, or better than, the original."

The famous theme music by Eric Coates would stay. Sir David said it would be crazy to change it.

Sniper62 wrote:
som1 should tell him about our game

Duke2 wrote:Hey Alli don't forget the Duke. I was in Fuelpumps movie to.

allibone wrote:*posted in the hangar, but i thought I'd post it here too

Yeah it's cool ain't it, imagine making a film about our little WWIIOL squad

I hope I get the lead as a grumpy Scot, sniper62 can be the horny teen and hiiamben the grizzled war vet. Bundyrum is definitely gonna be in the map room (possibly cracking one off over a full sized map of Europe). Mevan will have a cameo as a random well mannered Canadian. Whenever Reddog speaks all you will hear is a muffled noise, but in the film everyone except the audience will understand perfectly what he is saying.

Ben will randomly disappear (CTD) during the film, often in the middle of a scene which he is in.

Fuelpump will just get shot as the credits roll and explode into a tree.

Duke2 will be recovering in hospital for the whole movie, dressed in blue and white stripey pyjamas and pushed about in a wheelchair by buxom nurses who keep slapping his hands cos he keeps pinching their bums. Much like Yossarian (catch 22 for the uninitiated) there is nothing actually wrong with Duke2, he just keeps getting admitted to hospital to pinch the nurses bums and avoid certain death in one of Hiiambens suicidal lat line bomb runs.


p.s Mako, you aint gonna be in it you traitor