King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code monster adventure romance film[4] directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. The screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose was developed from an idea conceived by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. It stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot, and tells the story of a huge gorilla dubbed Kong who attempts to possess a beautiful young woman. It features stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and a music score by Max Steiner.
King Kong opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews, and has since been ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time[5] and the fifty-sixth greatest film of all time.[6] In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.[7][8] A sequel, titled Son of Kong, was fast-tracked and released the same year, with several more films made in the following decades, including two remakes which were made in 1976 and 2005 respectively, and a reboot in 2017.
