| Director | Peter Jackson |
|---|---|
| Budget | $207 million |
| Box office | $556.9 million |
In 1933, during the Great Depression, struggling New York City vaudeville performer Ann Darrow is hired by financially troubled filmmaker Carl Denham to star in a film with actor Bruce Baxter. Ann is hesitant to join the picture until she learns her favorite playwright, Jack Driscoll, is the screenwriter. Filming takes place on the SS Venture, a small cargo ship belonging to the Dutch East Indies colony, anchored in Surabaya under Captain Englehorn. Carl claims the Venture will sail to Singapore, but in truth, he intends to film the mysterious Skull Island. Captain Englehorn reconsiders the voyage, prompted by his crew's speculation of trouble ahead. During the voyage, Ann and Jack fall in love.
The Venture receives a radio message informing Englehorn there is a warrant for Carl's arrest due to his defiance of the studio's orders to cease production, and instructing Englehorn to divert to Rangoon, but the ship becomes lost in fog and runs aground on Skull Island. Carl and others, including his film crew consisting of cameraman Herb, assistant Preston and boom operator Mike, explore the island and are attacked by natives who kill Mike and a crewman. Englehorn rescues Carl's group, but as they all prepare to leave, the natives secretly abduct Ann to offer her as a sacrifice to Kong, a ape. Jack notices Ann's disappearance, and the crew returns to the island, but Kong flees with Ann into the jungle. Carl catches a glimpse of Kong and becomes determined to film him.
Englehorn organizes a rescue party, led by his first mate Hayes and Jack, and accompanied by Carl, Herb, Baxter and Preston. The party gets caught between a herd of grazing Brontosaurus baxteri and a pack of Utahraptor-like Venatosaurus saevidicus hunting them, with Herb and several other men killed in the resulting stampede. Baxter and some rescue party members return to the ship while the others decide to continue their search for Ann. Meanwhile, Ann wins Kong over with her vaudeville routine skills, and begins to grasp his intelligence and capacity for emotion.
The remaining party members continue through the jungle when Kong attacks, killing Hayes and several more crew members, and making the others fall into a ravine where Carl loses his camera. Kong rescues Ann from three Tyrannosaurus-like Vastatosaurus rexes and brings her to his den in the mountains. The remaining members of the rescue party are attacked and killed by giant insects in the ravine, but Preston, Carl, Jack, and Hayes' apprentice Jimmy are rescued by Baxter and Englehorn. Jack searches for Ann alone, while Carl decides to capture Kong. Jack finds Kong's lair and accidentally awakens him, but escapes with Ann to where the crew is waiting to capture the pursuing Kong. As Ann begs the crew not to harm him, Kong kills several sailors, but is subdued when Carl knocks him out with chloroform.
In New York City, around the Christmas season, Carl presents "Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World" on Broadway, starring Baxter and an imprisoned Kong. Ann, who refused to take part in the performance, is played by an anonymous chorus girl. Agitated by the chorus girl not being Ann and flashes from cameras, Kong breaks free from the chains, wrecks the theater, and bursts out into the streets of New York in search of Ann, chasing Jack before encountering her again. The U.S. Army attacks, and Kong tries getting Ann and himself to safety by climbing to the top of the Empire State Building.
Six United States Navy biplanes arrive; Kong downs three of them, but is mortally wounded from the planes' gunfire and dies on the roof, giving one last gaze at Ann, before his corpse falls from the building. As Jack reaches the top of the building to comfort and embrace Ann, civilians, policemen, and soldiers gather around the beast's corpse in the street, one bystander commenting the airplanes got him. Carl makes his way through the crowd, takes one last look at the lifeless Kong and, before walking away, says sadly, "It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast".