"The Lord of the Rings" and "King Kong" director Peter Jackson has confirmed he will produce a remake of the classic 1954 British war film "The Dam Busters" reports Screen Daily.
"King Kong" animator Christian Rivers will be sitting in the director's chair, and Jackson said it would be "as authentic as possible and as close to the spirit of the original as possible".
Reports first emerged in May that Jackson had teamed with Sir David Frost who owned the rights to Paul Brickhill's 1951 book on which the film was based. At the time he had spent a day filming one of the last surviving Lancaster bombers in preparation for the remake.
The 1954 film told the true story of how Britain developed bouncing bombs to destroy German dams in World War II. Michael Redgrave starred as Barnes Wallis, who developed the bomb, and Richard Todd as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who led the RAF bombing mission.
Jackson initially tried to get the rights to the project back when he was developing his "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, only to learn that Mel Gibson's company Icon held the rights and was considering directing it.
The remake is set to use details of the bombing mission which were still classified at the time the original film was made by director Michael Anderson. The project is due to start filming next year, with a budget of $30-40m.
