Following up our earlier story about Britain’s New Year’s honours list, we’ve gotten word of this year’s New Zealand’s New Year’s honours. Filmmaker Peter Jackson will be receiving the Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He’s the only one on New Zealand’s much shorter list of honorees with sf/f/h connections (see this page for the full list).
Writer, producer, director, and sometime actor Jackson has been involved in several major genre films of late, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, 2005’s King Kong, the forthcoming two-part The Hobbit, and the current The Lovely Bones. Other films he’s worked on include: District 9 (2009), The Frighteners (1996), Jack Brown Genius (1994), Braindead (1992), and Bad Taste (1987).