The Kiwi director is more used to working with the fantasy battles of Middle Earth, but now he’s focusing on World War I.
This year marks 100 years since the Great War ended and Jackson has been working with the BBC and London’s Imperial War Museum to mark the armistice
Sifting through mountains of unseen footage, the director aims to tell the true stories of those who lived through the First World War. The film he’ll working with has also been restored and hand-colourised.
According to Variety he was approached by the Imperial War Museum to find a way to present it in the best way possible.
Jackson said: “We’re making a film [that is] not the usual film you would expect on the First World War.
“We’re making a film that shows this incredible footage in which the faces of the men just jump out at you. It’s the people that come to life in this film.”
“We have made a movie which shows the experience of what it was like to fight in this war, not strategy [or] battles.”
The director also said he’s been through 600 hours of interviews with World War I veterans and aims to show the human experience of the war.
Meanwhile, he’s also working on a new sci-fi epic called Mortal Engines.
Jackson, who produces, is tackling Philip Reeve’s post-apocalyptic steampunk novel.
Following the Sixty Minute War, cities have become vast vehicles (Traction cities) that travel across waste lands searching for smaller mobile settlements to engulf for their resources.
Mortal Engines follows London in this world of Municipal Darwinism and specifically Tom Natsworthy, who embarks on an adventure with Hester Shaw, a girl with a disfigured face.