These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence; The connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost…But often magnificent - that happened after I was gone."

- Susie Salmon from The Lovely Bones

The haunting aftermath of a crime and the stirring restoration of a family unfold from the unexpected vantage point of the beyond in The Lovely Bones - the story of a life and everything that came after.  Based on the beloved, best-selling novel by Alice Sebold and directed by Oscar winner Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy), the film centers on Susie Salmon, who was just 14 years-old when she was murdered in December 1973 on her way home from school.  Following her death she continues to watch over her earthbound family - while her killer remains at large. Trapped in a wondrous, yet mysterious hereafter, Susie finds she must choose between her desire for vengeance and her yearning to see her loved ones heal and move on.  What begins as a shocking homicide unravels into a suspenseful and visually inventive journey through the bonds of memory, love and hope - towards a surprising and emotional reckoning. 
The film is directed by Peter Jackson from a screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the novel by Alice Sebold.   

Uncovering the Bones: About the Story
In 2002, a novel came out of nowhere to become a near-instant classic of our times, resonating deeply with readers and critics around the globe.  Alice Sebold's second novel, The Lovely Bones, appeared on the surface to be a dark tale of modern crime about an ordinary suburban child's haunting disappearance and murder.  Narrated from beyond the grave, the story of The Lovely Bones offers a unique and very personal take on the notion of the afterlife.  It is a tale about death that is filled with unexpected light, beauty and hope.
At the heart of the book is the endearingly honest, funny and brave Susie Salmon, who, after having departed this life at far too young an age, watches over the living from a mysterious personal realm where she can have anything she desires or imagines, except to be back with those she loves.  From this world once removed from our own, Susie watches her family as they come to grips with overwhelming loss.  As the family grapples with grief and growing frustration over the police's failure to solve the crime, Susie tries to guide her father towards uncovering the identity of her killer.  Strengthened by the love and compassion she feels for those she left behind, Susie eventually comes to understand that she must move on to enable her family to come to terms with her death and find some measure of peace. 
The novel was hailed as a "triumph" by Time Magazine and a "stunning achievement" by the New Yorker and became one of the most talked-about and widely read books of the last decade. 
Among the millions of readers immediately taken with the story of Susie Salmon and her family's search for justice and grace was one of today's most imaginative filmmakers: Peter Jackson.  "Alice Sebold's novel is one of those great books where you don't know what to expect; it is a tough, thrilling, emotional story.  As a filmmaker, that's terrifically interesting," he says. 
Jackson has a reputation for spellbinding storytelling on screen.  He is best known for having written, directed and produced The Lord of the Rings trilogy, creating an indelible screen life for the fantasy world forged by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Combined, the three films have grossed almost $3 billion at the box office, been nominated for 30 Academy Awards®, and won 17 Oscars®, including Best Picture for the third film, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.  Jackson took home Oscars® for his direction and for the screenplay of The Return of the King.  In 2005, he went on to direct, co-write and produce a contemporary adaptation of one of the best-known stories of all time: King Kong, which grossed over $500 million and won three Oscars®.  Earlier in his career, Jackson wrote and directed a darkly emotional, critically acclaimed film that was based on a true story, called Heavenly Creatures.
It was while Jackson was still in post-production on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that he first read The Lovely Bones, given to him by his longtime filmmaking associates Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, who were ardent fans of the novel. 
"People were starting to rave to me about this book and so as soon as I could, I grabbed it.  I wanted to see what the excitement was about," Jackson recalls.  "I found it to be a tremendously powerful and evocative story. On the face of it, the novel is about every parent's darkest fear - the loss of a child.  Yet, ultimately, it grows into a story about the redeeming power of love, which is why I think, so many people are drawn to the book."
Jackson's interest was piqued, but in order to proceed the team needed both the rights to the book and Sebold's blessing. The novel had already been optioned in unfinished manuscript form thanks to the smart good taste of Aimée Peyronnet, a producer from Wild Child Films, and also James Wilson, who was then an executive at Film4.  Jackson, Walsh and Boyens' huge passion for the book eventually led them to Film4's door, at a time when this exciting collaboration became possible.  "There was a real connection when we met Alice," recalls Boyens.  "She's a funny, generous, open-hearted person who is brutally honest with a dark sense of humor.  We felt so lucky when she came back to us and said we were the right people to tackle the book." 
Wingnut and Film4 formed a partnership and Ken Kamins, the team's longstanding manager, took Peter, Fran and Philippa's script - which was written on spec - to the market where it landed at DreamWorks. This is when Steven Spielberg, who had been in love with the novel since its publication, came aboard as executive producer, joining Tessa Ross from Film4, along with Kamins and James Wilson.  "Steven had a genuine respect for the book and a real desire to see this film made," says Jackson.  "It was a natural fit for us to work together and he was full of ideas in developing the screenplay and beyond.  He provided great support any time we needed advice." 
Jackson, Walsh and Boyens all collaborated, as they often do, on the screenplay adaptation.  Though the trio has re-envisioned iconic characters and classic literature in their previous work, this project would present an entirely fresh set of challenges.  "We all like puzzles and I think we saw The Lovely Bones as the ultimate puzzle for screenwriters," says Jackson.  "How do you take Alice's very intricate, poetic book, which doesn't in any way scream 'I'm a movie' and structure it as a film?  We became obsessed with how to move the pieces around to tell this story on the screen," he explains. 
Boyens credits Walsh with finding a way in.  "Fran always had an innate idea of what the story could be, why it was worth telling and how it could be told with a mixture of magic and the chaos of reality.  She saw how it could weave multiple film genres together," she says.
"It's an especially tricky story to adapt," Boyens continues.  "It's so incredibly layered and emotional and it's not linear, so it was an ongoing process, step by step, of finding our way through.  It's a story that is darkly funny, it is brutal, surprising, gorgeous and full of emotion; Peter wanted to deliver all of that." 
A big part of that challenge was determining how to depict the story's highly unconventional main location: the place which Susie refers to as "The In-Between."
From the start, Jackson, Walsh and Boyens knew that they wanted Susie's experience of the afterlife to be completely personal and specific to Susie's understanding of the world.  They wanted it to transcend religious traditions and celestial imagery - and for it to reflect instead Susie's inner-consciousness and emotional life.  Most of all, they wanted it to feel like the quintessential dream world; influenced by earthly events yet limitless in its possibilities to conjure anything and everything that might Susie might choose to  experience or imagine.
"What we attempted to do is to present an afterlife that is evocative, elusive and ephemeral. It is a place which reflects the eye of the beholder; it isn't filled with any particular religious iconography," Jackson notes.  "I wanted to keep it mysterious and intangible.  It's called 'The In-Between' because Susie is basically caught in the 'blue horizon' - the space she refers to as being between Heaven and Earth.  'The In-Between' is not a literal Heaven so much a place where Susie stops to take spiritual and emotional refuge, before she is ready to move on." 
Susie's "In-Between" is a mix of breathtaking beauty and frightening darkness; it is comforting and sad, beautiful and strange, and it is profoundly connected to events that unfold on Earth.
Jackson, Walsh and Boyens focused Susie's emotional investment in solving her own murder, which fuels her rage and desire for revenge.  She is all too aware that her killer, the eerily normal Mr. Harvey, appears to have gotten away with an act of sheer evil - but she has no obvious means of leading her family or the police to her murderer's door. 
"The story is also a thriller," points out Jackson, "and Mr. Harvey is a fascinating kind of character because he's an Everyman.  He mows the lawn, he chats with the neighbors, he knows the value of appearances and Susie starts to wonder if this man might actually get away murder."
Yet, the suspense of the film is woven into a bigger, more stirring story about the human capacity to find joy, no matter.  "l like to think of the movie as an 'emotional thriller,' Jackson says.  "It's about an evil man who takes pleasure in murder and it's also about a family trying to figure out how to rebuild their lives in the face of overwhelming loss." 
Boyens notes that part of the film's ratcheting tension is created by the audience's ever-increasing hope that Susie and her family will each find their own path out of the dark woods of fear and anger.  "One of the brilliant things that Alice Sebold originally did with this story is to invest the reader in Susie escaping from this in-between state," she says.  "You yearn for the entire Salmon family to reach the point where they can let go of what happened, without letting go of love." 
Susie too eventually comes to understand that she must face her own death in order to transcend it.   At the end of the story, Susie lets go of the vengeance and anger and hate.  She lets go of her life and is finally able to 'see the world without her in it'. In effect, she grows up without ever growing old. 
Sums up Jackson: "The story begins with Susie's murder and there is grief and loss and unimaginable pain, but the strength of the Salmon family prevails through all of it; somehow they survive, somehow they find a way to rebuild and carry on and keep Susie in their hearts as a living memory, which is a tremendously hopeful place to leave the story."

Hearts and Bones: Casting the Salmon Family
Though the story of The Lovely Bones is lit with magical, surreal elements, Peter Jackson says that, at heart, it's a simple and starkly real story of a family grappling with how to love each other in the face of loss and a completely unpredictable world.  He always saw the Salmons as the very skeleton of the story, and he and his team scoured the globe for a cast that could bring each family member to life in all their foibles, needs and hopes.   
The character at the center of it all - the 14 year-old girl left in an ethereal limbo by her own murder, Susie Salmon - proved to be the most challenging role to fill.  Jackson was searching for someone who could not only embody Susie's girlish exuberance and innocence, but also had the courage and skill to expose her raw emotions as she confronts the aftermath of her departure from earthly life.  Read more

The Bone Collectors:  Mr. Harvey and Detective Len Fenerman
The close-knit structure of the Salmon family is undone in an instant by a man driven by the basest instincts of predatory evil, a man who uses his very ordinariness to mask the darkness of his soul.  George Harvey is a quiet and solitary builder of doll houses; he is, as Susie says, a 'good neighbor,' an unremarkable man, who does not seek or attract the attention of others.  Thus he is able to lure Susie to her death and quietly slip back into anonymity without inviting suspicion. Peter Jackson felt strongly that bringing The Lovely Bones fully to life on screen would hinge on finding a brilliant actor to play Mr. Harvey.  His choice was both unexpected and fortuitous: stage and screen veteran Stanley Tucci.  Read more

Fusing Heaven and Earth In the Film's Visual Design
For Peter Jackson, one of the most intriguing aspects of The Lovely Bones was the way Alice Sebold's story opened up the reader's imagination by fusing real life on earth with the mystery of what comes after.  The otherworldly elements of The Lovely Bones allowed Jackson to play in a new way with the kinds of fantasy realms he is renowned for creating.  And yet, at the same time, the movie is perhaps his most cinematically spare and starkly emotional film to date.  Read more

Imagining What Comes Next:  Creating Susie's Heavenly Limbo
When it came to creating the limitless realm of "The In-Between," Jackson elected to use visual metaphor to reflect Susie's hopes and joys and innermost fears.  "'The In-Between is driven by Susie's emotions," the director explains.  "It alters and shifts depending on whether she's happy or sad; it's entirely a reflection of Susie's mood and the culture that surrounded her when she was alive.  There are moments that are idyllic and moments that are very dark."  Read more

Earth Seeps Into Heaven: Susie's Motifs
As surreal and magical as it is, Susie's in-between world is also populated by a series of touchstone items from her life on earth that continue to hold her in limbo.Read more

Back Down on Earth:  The Pennsylvania Production Design
As soon as Jackson secured the rights to adapt The Lovely Bones, he felt compelled to visit Alice Sebold's native Pennsylvania.  After seeing firsthand the communities in Chester County, 25 miles outside of Philadelphia, with their signature architecture and landscape, he knew that he had to make his film adaptation of The Lovely Bones in the place that inspired the novel, the first time Jackson ever shot a film on location in the United States.   Read more

Earthly Appearances: Costumes, Hair and Makeup
Adding more layers of atmosphere to the Salmons' 1970s suburban reality was the work of costume designer Nancy Steiner (Little Miss Sunshine, Virgin Suicides), who grew up in the '70s herself.  Steiner's aim was to capture the feel of the era without slipping into the overstatement and campiness that can often accompany it.  Read more

Listening to the Bones: About the Sound
Sound was as key to Peter Jackson's vision of The Lovely Bones as the visuals, and he collaborated closely with a sound design team that includes re-recording mixer Michael Hedges, sound designer Dave Whitehead and supervising sound editors Brent Burge and Chris Ward.  "With this film we've tried to use sound that evokes emotions and psychological reactions," says the director.  "We've played with both unnatural sounds and organic sounds, the levels, the mixtures - everything you can conceivably do with sound, we discussed it." Read more

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

PETER JACKSON (DIRECTOR/SCREENPLAY/PRODUCER) 
Peter Jackson made history with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, becoming the first person to direct three major feature films simultaneously.  The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King were nominated for and collected a slew of awards from around the globe, including 17 Academy Awards, 12 British Academy of Film and Television Awards and four Golden Globes. 
It was for The Return of the King that Jackson received his most impressive collection of awards.  This included three Academy Awards (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture), two Golden Globes (Best Director and Best Motion Picture-Drama), three BAFTAs (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film and Audience Award), a Directors Guild Award, a Producers Guild Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award.
As a follow-up to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in 2005 Jackson directed, wrote and produced King Kong for Universal Pictures.  The film grossed over $500 million and won three Oscars.
Jackson previously received widespread acclaim for his 1994 feature Heavenly Creatures, which received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Original Screenplay.  Other film credits include The Frighteners, starring Michael J. Fox; the adult puppet feature Meet the Feebles; and Braindead, which won 16 international science fiction awards, including the Saturn.  Jackson also co-directed the television documentary Forgotten Silver, which also hit the film festival circuit.
This past summer, Jackson produced the worldwide sci-fi hit District 9.  He is currently serving as producer on Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, the first of a planned trilogy, one of which he plans to direct.  He has co-written the screenplays and will serve as executive producer on Guillermo del Toro's two-film adaptation of Tolkien's The Hobbit.  He is also producer of the remake of the WWII film Dambusters.   
Born in New Zealand on Halloween in 1961, Jackson began at an early age making movies with his parents' Super 8 camera.  At 17, he left school and, after purchasing a 16mm camera, began shooting a science fiction comedy short which, three years later, had grown into a 75-minute feature called Bad Taste.
Jackson works closely with partner Fran Walsh, with whom he shares his writing and producing credits, as well as a family.  Jackson has a special interest in WWI memorabilia and is the proud owner of a number of aircraft from that era. 

FRAN WALSH (SCREENPLAY/PRODUCER)   
Fran Walsh has received numerous nominations from around the globe for co-writing and producing The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, but it is her work on The Return of the King, the final film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, that has been most celebrated.  Walsh shared writing, producing and songwriting credits on The Return of the King, for which she garnered three Academy Awards, three BAFTAs, two Golden Globes, one Grammy, and a Producers Guild Award.
Walsh's first Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay was for the feature Heavenly Creatures, which she co-wrote with her collaborator Peter Jackson.  Other writing credits co-written with Jackson include Forgotten Silver, The Frighteners, Meet the Feebles, and Braindead.
Walsh, who has a background in music, began her writing career soon after leaving Victoria University, where she majored in English literature.  She continued her tradition of working alongside lifetime partner Peter Jackson as a writer and producer on King Kong.  She will next co-write, with Jackson, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro, two films based on The Hobbit. 

PHILIPPA BOYENS (SCREENPLAY/CO-PRODUCER)   
Since being named by Variety in their list of "Ten Writers to Watch in 2000," Philippa Boyens, who made her debut as a screenwriter with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, has won (along with co-writers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh) an Oscar and a BAFTA and has been nominated for two WGA Awards, among others.  Boyens has since collaborated with Jackson on the remake of King Kong, The Lovely Bones and the upcoming The Hobbit.
Prior to working as a screenwriter, Boyens worked in theater as a playwright, teacher, producer and editor.  Boyens moved to film via a stint as director of the New Zealand Writers Guild. 

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