In Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong, Jack Black plays filmmaker Carl Denham.
Denham is an ambitious director who assembles an expedition to the mysterious Skull Island in search of material for a new movie. He persuades playwright Jack Driscoll and actress Ann Darrow to join the voyage aboard the Venture, then becomes determined to capture Kong for public display.
Black’s performance presents Denham as energetic, opportunistic, and increasingly reckless. Adrien Brody plays Jack Driscoll, while Naomi Watts plays Ann Darrow. These roles are sometimes mixed up because all three characters are central to the expedition’s story.
The 2005 film reworks characters from the 1933 King Kong movie while expanding the expedition and Skull Island sequences. Carl Denham is the remake’s version of the original film’s filmmaker, also named Carl Denham, but the character is played by a different actor in each production.