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The albino gorilla Floquet de Neu (Snowflake) inspired the movements of the new digital King Kong.

While shooting “The Return of the King” Peter Jackson approached actor Andy Serkis who played the virtual character “the Gollum” and showed him some pictures of an albino gorilla. As Andy recalls it: “Peter started showing me pictures of this gorilla named Snowflake one day. It dawned on me why he was showing me these pictures, and by the end of the conversation he said, -We’d like you to come and work on King Kong”.

Floquet de Neu (Snowflake), the only known white gorilla, was rescued from certain death in 1966 in Equatorial Guinea by zoologist Jordi Sabater Pi and brought to the Barcelona Zoo where he died of skin cancer in December 2003.

Peter Jackson’s has been publishing his production and post-production notes in a weblog called KongIsKing.net where you can get all the behind the scenes material. The film will be released by Christmas and it features Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody.

Here’s a picture of the animation team for Peter Jackson’s upcoming movie King Kong with some pictures of Floquet de Neu (Snowflake) on the production board in the background.