Peter Jackson Complete Filmography
Peter Jackson directed 11 feature films as of the latest public data, spanning fantasy, horror, and war genres. His debut feature Bad Taste (1987) was a low-budget cult sci-fi horror film produced by his company Weta Workshop. Meet the Feebles (1989) followed as a puppet musical comedy, and Braindead (1992) became a landmark New Zealand horror film. Heavenly Creatures (1994) marked his first drama based on a real murder case, earning critical attention and a place on the New York Times film database. The Frighteners (1996) was his first studio-backed horror-comedy, distributed by Universal Pictures and grossing $69 million worldwide. The Forbes analysis of Weta Digital's growth notes how Jackson's visual effects company evolved from this film onward.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) remains Jackson's most commercially successful work, produced by New Line Cinema and WingNut Films. The trilogy earned 17 Academy Awards across the three films, including Best Picture for The Return of the King. Worldwide box office totals exceeded $2.9 billion, making it one of the highest-grossing film series of its era. The SEC filing for New Line Cinema's parent company documented the financial structure behind the trilogy's production and distribution. The Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014) followed, also distributed by Warner Bros., and grossed over $2.9 billion combined.
Production Companies and Visual Effects
Weta Workshop and Weta Digital served as the primary production and visual effects companies for Jackson's major projects. Weta Digital handled CGI and motion capture for Avatar (2009), which became the highest-grossing film worldwide at the time of release. Jackson served as a producer on the Avatar franchise, with the sequel Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) surpassing $2.3 billion globally. The Forbes report on Weta Digital's industry role details the company's technical contributions across Jackson's filmography.
WingNut Films, Jackson's production company, has produced all of his directorial works since Heavenly Creatures. The company also produced They Shall Not Grow Old (2018), a documentary using restored and colorized World War I footage, and The Beatles: Get Back (2021), a documentary series on the band's final recording sessions. Both projects were distributed by Warner Bros. and Netflix respectively. Jackson's production model relies on in-house visual effects teams, with Weta Digital handling complex CGI sequences for films such as King Kong (200