Editing Heavenly Creatures (section)

===Development===
[[Fran Walsh]] suggested to [[Peter Jackson]] (who was noted for horror-comedy films) that they write a film about the notorious Parker–Hulme murder. Jackson took the idea to his long-time collaborator, producer Jim Booth (who died after filming). The three filmmakers decided that the film should tell the story of the friendship between the two girls rather than focus on the murder and trial. "The friendship was for the most part a rich and rewarding one, and we tried to honour that in the film. It was our intention to make a film about a friendship that went terribly wrong," said Peter Jackson.<ref name="hcfaq">{{cite web|url=http://www.heavenlycreaturesmovie.com|title=Fourth World - The Heavenly Creatures Website|website=Heavenlycreaturesmovie.com|access-date=24 August 2017}}</ref>

Walsh had been interested in the case since her early childhood. "I first came across it in the late Sixties when I was ten years old.<ref name="hcfaq"/> ''The Sunday Times'' devoted two whole pages to the story with an accompanying illustration of the two girls. I was struck by the description of the dark and mysterious friendship that existed between them—by the uniqueness of the world the two girls had created for themselves."

Jackson and Walsh researched the story by reading contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the trial. They decided that the sensational aspects of the case that so titillated newspaper readers in 1954 were far removed from the story that Jackson and Walsh wished to tell. "In the 1950s, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme were branded as possibly the most evil people on earth. What they had done seemed without rational explanation, and people could only assume that there was something terribly wrong with their minds," states Jackson. To bring a more humane version of events to the screen, the filmmakers undertook a nationwide search for people who had had close involvement with Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme forty years earlier. This included tracing and interviewing seventeen of their former classmates and teachers from [[Christchurch Girls' High School]]. In addition, Jackson and Walsh spoke to neighbours, family friends, colleagues, police officers, lawyers and [[psychologist]]s. Jackson and Walsh also read Pauline's diary, in which she made daily entries documenting her friendship with Juliet Hulme and events throughout their relationship. From the diary entries, Jackson and Walsh perceived that Pauline and Juliet were intelligent, imaginative, outcast young women who possessed a wicked and somewhat irreverent sense of humour. In the film all of Pauline's voice-overs are excerpts from her journal entries.