Peter Jackson Admits 'Mistakes' Were Made Around Ryan Gosling's Abrupt Exit from “The Lovely Bones”
Peter Jackson Admits 'Mistakes' Were Made Around Ryan Gosling's Abrupt Exit from “The Lovely Bones”
Tommy McArdle, Carita RizzoWed, May 13, 2026 at 7:03 PM UTC
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Peter Jackson on May 12, 2026; Ryan Gosling on March 18, 2026
Credit: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty; Theo Wargo/WireImage
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At the Cannes Film Festival, Peter Jackson was asked to share his "version" of Ryan Gosling's 2010 claim that he exited The Lovely Bones because Jackson was unhappy with his weight gain for the part
Jackson declined to get into specifics, but he suggested that recasting any part in a movie "means that we got it wrong"
Mark Wahlberg played the character Ryan Gosling was originally cast as in the 2009 movie
Peter Jackson is opening up — a little bit — about Ryan Gosling's claim that he exited the 2009 movie The Lovely Bonesbecause he gained more weight for his role than the filmmakers thought necessary.
Gosling, 45, famously told The Hollywood Reporterin 2010 that he gained 60 lbs. in order to portray a father whose daughter is murdered in the movie, which Jackson, 64, directed. Mark Wahlberg ultimately starred in the film, and Gosling said at the time that he "had gotten it wrong" when he arrived for the film's production at 210 lbs., leading Jackson to recast the part.
At the Cannes Film Festival in France on Wednesday, May 13, the Lord of the Rings director was asked to share his "version" of Gosling's story during a career retrospective conversation with journalist Didier Allouch. "I won't talk about any particular examples of actors because it's a personal, private thing and it's not their fault," he responded. "Anytime we recast an actor, it's actually our fault because we didn't get the casting right and we cast the wrong person for a role. It's not because they did anything wrong. So, I'm not going to talk about individuals, but you just got to realize that what you were imagining isn't really quite happening, which means that we got it wrong and so we take full responsibility."
Jackson was in Cannes to receive an honorary Palme d'Or at its opening ceremony for his contributions to the film industry. "Ryan is a fantastic actor, as we know. Films are a chemistry. Films are a chemistry both on camera and behind the camera," Jackson added, while touching on The Lovely Bones. "They're chemistry in terms of what the actor conveys to the audience of the film. It's just a complicated sort of amalgam of communication of how somebody gels into a group of people, into a story, into a character. It's complicated and usually you try very hard when you're planning the film, casting it, trying to get that gel kind of right, but occasionally we make our own mistakes."
Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci in 2009's The Lovely Bones
Credit: Barry Wetcher/Paramount
The Lovely Bones, based on Alice Sebold's 2002 novel of the same name, starred Saoirse Ronan as a teenager who watches over her grieving family members after she is murdered by a serial killer (Stanley Tucci). Wahlberg co-starred in the movie with Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Michael Imperioli after Gosling exited the film.
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In 2010, Gosling appeared to pin the mix-up about his weight gain for the movie on a lack of communication before filming started. “We didn't talk very much during the pre-production process, which was the problem,” he told THR. “It was a huge movie, and there's so many things to deal with, and he couldn't deal with the actors individually. I just showed up on set, and I had gotten it wrong. Then I was fat and unemployed.”
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Mark Wahlberg and Saorsie Ronan in 2009's The Lovely Bones
Credit: Paramount Pictures
The outlet also reported at the time that Jackson's partner and film collaborator Fran Walsh said that Gosling told the movie's producers he felt he was "too young" to portray the father character multiple times before production began. “It wasn't until we were in pre-production and we had the cast there that it became increasingly clear: He was so uncomfortable moving forward, and we began to feel he was not right," she said. "It was our blindness, the desire to make it work no matter what.”
The Cannes Film Festival runs through May 23. Jackson revealed in Cannes that he is currently developing a new Adventures of Tintin movie; he is also producing the two new The Lord of the Rings moviesin development.
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