LORD OF THE RINGS Filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson On Teaming With Colossal To Resurrect The Giant Moa (Exclusive)

LORD OF THE RINGS Filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson On Teaming With Colossal To Resurrect The Giant Moa (Exclusive)

Legendary filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson is joined by Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm and archaeologist Kyle Davis to discuss their incredible mission to resurrect the extinct South Island Giant Moa...

By JoshWilding - Jul 09, 2025 11:07 AM EST
Filed Under: Other

In a historic indigenous-coordinated initiative, the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre has entered into a collaboration with Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based genetic engineering and de-extinction company, and acclaimed The Lord of the Rings director Sir Peter Jackson, to work together to resurrect the extinct South Island Giant Moa.

This comes after Colossal successfully brought back the dire wolf, and we recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jackson, Ben Lamm, Colossal CEO and co-founder, and Kyle Davis, a Ngāi Tahu archaeologist.

To bring you up to speed, the moa were flightless birds endemic to New Zealand that went extinct approximately 600 years ago, approximately two centuries after Polynesian settlement. These remarkable birds, which consisted of nine distinct species, ranged from turkey-sized species to the South Island Giant Moa (Dinornis robustus), which stood up to 3.6 meters tall.

As large herbivores, moa played crucial ecological roles in New Zealand's forests and grasslands for millions of years. Their browsing habits shaped vegetation structure and composition, while their seed dispersal activities influenced plant distribution patterns. The extinction of moa resulted in significant changes to New Zealand's ecosystems, creating cascading effects still evident today.

During our conversation, the trio talks to us about their goals, how this collaboration came to be, the Jurassic Park of it all, The Avengers being a surprise source of inspiration, and which other creatures they'd like to give the de-extinction treatment. 

We started by asking Jackson what led him to get involved with this mission to restore the giant moa, prompting him to explain his working relationship with the team at Colossal Biosciences. 

Revealing that it goes back to his hopes for the future as a child (which included the resurrection of dinosaurs, which, sadly, isn't possible), the filmmaker told us that Godzilla: King of the Monsters helmer Michael Dougherty connected him with Lamm after working on a documentary for the company. 

"I did a Zoom call, met Ben, and I was disappointed in a way, because I had a look at their website beforehand, and they were talking about bringing the Mammoth, the Dodo, and the Tasmanian Tiger [back], but there was no sign of the Moa," Jackson said. "As soon as I got on the call with them, I said, 'Why not the Moa?'"

Asked what it means to have a collaborator like the King Kong director, Lamm told us, "Having someone like Peter involved, and Fran [Walsh] is amazing. Not only are they great investors and very thoughtful business people, but they also help us think through all these things. They've been incredible [and opened] up their homes to us."

He'd go on to explain that Jackson and Walsh's collection of bones proved pivotal to Colossal's mission, and praised the duo for connecting his company with the best people possible to help them achieve this de-extinction mission. 

Davis was among them and said he had "plenty of dreams" about being part of something like this before elaborating on the importance of the giant moa to New Zealand. 

"It's just one of those iconic lost species or lost environmental entities that captures the imagination," the archaeologist explained. "As a career archaeologist and environmentalist, the prospect of understanding those dynamics more to add to our own tribal story is very, very exciting."

After Jackson dismissed the notion of stepping behind the camera to work on a documentary for Colossal (he'd rather not mix his work with an endeavour he's enjoying pursuing in his personal life), we wondered what's next for him as a filmmaker. 

"The Hunt for Gollum, which is a Lord of the Rings connected movie that Andy Serkis, who played Gollum, will direct. But we're working on the script and producing it. So that's something for next year. Yeah."

You can hear more from Jackson, Lamm, and Davis in our full interview. More details on their collaboration can also be found below. 

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Malatrova15
Malatrova15 - 7/9/2025, 11:21 AM
Moa reign of terror will never come back
Matador
Matador - 7/9/2025, 11:22 AM
Thanksgiving with MOA turkey legs will never be the same.

User Comment Image
BackwardGalaxy
BackwardGalaxy - 7/9/2025, 11:30 AM
You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts. Come on!
PC04
PC04 - 7/9/2025, 11:34 AM
This is amazing!
BigPhilbowski
BigPhilbowski - 7/9/2025, 11:59 AM
"This comes after Colossal successfully brought back the dire wolf"

This is a straight up lie. The wolf they made is nothing close to a dire wolf and is barely even related. There's current animals around today that are closer to dire wolves than the slightly altered grey wolf they created. This bird will be the same thing
McMurdo
McMurdo - 7/9/2025, 12:19 PM
@BigPhilbowski - exactly. It's complete and utter marketing hype and the trades ate it like candy the first go round. Then the scientist came out and explained how this is complete nonsense.
BigPhilbowski
BigPhilbowski - 7/9/2025, 2:14 PM
@McMurdo - exactly. If I remember correct, the jackal is the closest living relative to a dire wolf. A regular jackal is closer genetically to them than the thing they created. I also find it hilarious that they decided to change its fur to white, despite direwolves most likely never having been that colour, just because it looked cool
McMurdo
McMurdo - 7/9/2025, 2:38 PM
@BigPhilbowski - yeah it's honestly nothing close to a dire wolf. They're just spending millions of dollars from rich filmmakers and tech elites to play with biological toys.
TrentCrimm
TrentCrimm - 7/9/2025, 7:10 PM
@McMurdo -

Of course it's marketing, no one would give a shit if they didnt do marketing like this.

Colossals main goal is working towards better conservation methods for the animals we have now, all this bringing back extinct animals stuff is just marketing to get attention and investors brought into the cause, because the world famously does not give a shit about the animals we have now. This isn't conjecture, Colossal themselves have said this is what they need to do otherwise the funding just wouldn't be there.

Tldr; Conservation is the real goal, bringing back extinct animals is a flashy way to get funding.
McMurdo
McMurdo - 7/9/2025, 7:51 PM
@TrentCrimm - sure but they still pretended to resurrect the dire wolf and the media ate it up.
McMurdo
McMurdo - 7/9/2025, 12:18 PM
They're just utilizing proxy engineering. They are not resurrecting anything. They're creating hybrids that never existed in the first place. They made this claim with dire wolves....it was complete BS. They used gray wolves and Dire wolves diverged from grey wolves 5 millions years ago lol. That means their entire genome is very different than just a few genes. Skull shape, bone structure, metabolism, immune cells etc are coded by millions of base pairs across the genome. Thus, there's no suitable host animal whose genome can be edited into a dire wolf today. Editing a few genes into a gray wolf just doesn't create the blueprint for a dire wolf. It's like taking a sabertooth tiger's teeth and putting it on a house cat and calling it a sabertooth tiger. They just made a slightly bigger gray wolf with more hair! dire wolves had gigantic heads used for crushing bones....closer to a hyena skull.

It's all marketing hype with this company. They aren't resurrecting anything. They're cloning and making hybrid species that in no way represent the species they claim.
JacobsLadder
JacobsLadder - 7/9/2025, 1:36 PM
The Moa had their chance. Nature selected them for extinction.
OrgasmicPotatoe
OrgasmicPotatoe - 7/9/2025, 3:01 PM
What a bunch of horseshit
DocSpock
DocSpock - 7/9/2025, 3:16 PM

Kentucky Fried Moa

Coming to a restaurant row near you!


bkmeijer1
bkmeijer1 - 7/9/2025, 6:03 PM
I no way did I expect CBM.com to land an interview with Colossal, and even less so that Peter Jackson would be involved with that. He sure is involved with interesting tech.
GirshwinDavies
GirshwinDavies - 7/10/2025, 3:03 AM
Lmao you nerds getting upset over birds

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