Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is set to remake the World War II classic The Dam Busters, and he has given the film's top job to a 33-year-old Wellingtonian who has never before directed a feature film.
Jackson will produce the film but it will be directed by Christian Rivers who won a 2006 Academy Award for his animation work on Jackson's version of King Kong.
The new film will mark his directorial debut.
"They definitely are taking a punt on me," says Rivers
The original Dam Busters is a classic British war film based on a true story about a Royal Air Force mission to cripple the German steel industry.
Widely considered one of the most daring missions in aerial military history, Dam Busters follows Operation Chastise, a top-secret RAF mission which aimed to destroy three dams that were key to the Nazi steel industry.
"This is one of the most remarkable true stories to come out of World War II," Jackson said in statement, adding that many details of the dam raids were still a closely guarded secret when the first film was made in 1954.
Jackson says he plans to use state-of-the-art computer generated visual effects to give new life to the adventures of the 617 Squadron, a specially chosen group of pilots from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
The pilots were sent on a mission in 1943 to fly deep into well-armed Germany to destroy the dams.
The revolutionary "bouncing" bomb they were to use had to be dropped from very close range at low altitude. The airmen were trained for the single, specific mission, and the potential for success was small.
Surviving dam buster bomber pilot, 87-year-old John Lesley, says he has mixed feelings about the remake.
"I think the original film did a very good job. There were quite a number of technical errors in it, which no doubt Peter would rectify if he makes it," he says.
Universal Pictures, which is part of General Electric Co
controlled NBC Universal, is making the film in association with
Studiocanal, which is part of French media company Vivendi's Canal
+ Group.
