The director chose not to include a violent scene in The Lovely Bones so that more teenagers could watch the film.
The Lovely Bones is based on the Alice Sebold novel of the same name. Jackson said that he didn’t include a violent sexual scene, because he wanted the film to be accessible to adolescents.
"The film is about a teenager. She’s murdered, she goes into an afterlife experience – her in-between – and we wanted to make a film that teenagers could watch. I have a daughter… we wanted Katie to be able to see this film," the director told FemaleFirst.
He never wanted the film’s focus to be the murder, and he had no intentions of featuring a rape, because he didn’t want to show such violence on screen.
The Lovely Bones, starring Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg and Susan Sarandon, will hit theatres on January 15.