Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson reportedly 'working to bring back' a bird extinct for 600 years

Filmmaker Peter Jackson has taken up a new role. The Lord of the Rings director is on a mission to bring back the Moa, a bird native to New Zealand which went extinct 600 years ago. The largest variety of the Moa species, the South Island Giant Moa, was around 3.6 meters tall and weighed approximately 500lbs, as per Dexerto.

As part of Jackson’s mission to bring the bird to life, he invested in a Texas based company named Colossal Biosciences. According to The Independent, Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh have invested $15 million in the biotech company, which will be working with New Zealand’s Ngāi Tahu Research Centre.

While speaking to IGN, Jackson discussed his motivations behind supporting the initiative, and said,

“I’ve always loved the idea of de-extinction. Particularly, since the science can also have huge benefits with endangered species too…Colossal are obviously working on other animals too, but as a New Zealander, the Moa is a bird that is part of the country's DNA. It made such a strong impact on the Maori too.”

Jackson also noted that the company’s main focus will be resurrecting the biggest species. He said to IGN,

“The nine species of Moa ranged from turkey size up to the South Island Giant Moa, which was the largest Moa at around 13 foot tall. We don’t really see the point of working on anything but the largest at this stage... although I’m hoping we’ll eventually resurrect all nine species over time.”

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has a collection of Moa bones

Peter Jackson and Colossal Biosciences are working with Moa expert, Paul Scofield in their endeavor to bring the bird back to life. According to The Independent, Scofield, who is a senior curator of natural history at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, noted that he met Jackson when he helped the director identify which bones from his collection corresponded to which Moa species. As per the publication, Scofield said,

“He doesn’t just collect some moa bones – he has a comprehensive collection.”

Jackson himself referenced his collection when he discussed the stage that the project is currently in with IGN. Opening up about using Moa bones to recreate the bird’s DNA, he revealed,

“Fran and I have a collection of around 400 Moa bones, and we’ve already sampled them for DNA. I see my role over the next year or two as gathering as many more bones as I can. The more bones, the better the genome.”

Ben Lamm, the CEO of Colossal Biosciences, also shared the science behind the de-extinction project with IGN. He said,

“At Colossal, we like to parallel path as much as possible so while we are working on sampling various Moa bones to collect ancient DNA for sampling, we are also working on reference genomes for some of the Moa's closest living relatives and developing culture conditions to eventually start editing. We also have samples we have taken from Moa currently being sequenced as well.”

Meanwhile, Peter Jackson currently has another project from the Lord of the Rings franchise lined up. As per Variety, Jackson is producing The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which is being directed by Andy Serkis, and is scheduled to release in 2027.