The day was always destined to come for Christian Rivers to be the director of a big scale Hollywood film. Over the years Rivers has worked in the Art Department of massive movies like King Kong, The Lord Of The Rings franchise and The Hobbit franchise, his work on King Kong even earned him an Academy Award. Of course for a lot of his career Rivers has had the opportunity to work with the legendary Peter Jackson and now Jackson has helped Rivers take the step to become a director in his own right by hiring to sit in the main chair on the brand new epic sci-fi Mortal Engines.
“That is exactly what it feels like,” says Rivers when HEAVY Mag sits down with him to chat about the film and we mention that releasing a film must feel like revealing a baby to the world. “It is terrifying because this is my first feature and I have received a lot of support from some incredibly talented people, but there is very terrifying. I’ve also found that I can no longer look at it objectively anymore, you know you look at it as someone who can remember every shot and you remember what the dilemmas were on that day to get that shot and you really can’t see the woods for the trees and I guess when you get to that point it just belongs to the audience now and you have to put it out to the audience and hope they like it.”
“The easy answer to that is that Peter Jackson asked me to direct it,” says Rivers when I ask why he decided Mortal Engines should be his first film as director. “It is actually that simple. I have worked with Peter for a number of years now and I have worn a number of different hats. In my capacity has his career has grown I have done a lot of things – second unit on The Hobbit films and a few others and then I directed by own short film. Then I was actually in the process of taking the next step and directing a kind of low budget film that was going to be genre, and I was well into that process and then I got a phone call one day when I was going to work one day from Peter and Fran saying ‘we are starting to run out of time on Mortal Engines would you like to direct it?’ So yeah my whole world changed.”
You can listen to our full interview with Christian Rivers on Spotify. Mortal Engines opens on the 6th December.
