Origin of 'Kong': The Unbelievable True Backstory of Hollywood's Favorite Giant Ape

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/king-kong-unbelievable-true-story-hollywoods-favorite-giant-ape-984785

Cooper suddenly got this idea. He said he’d like to make a natural drama about an ape that fights a Komodo dragon. He thought that would be really exciting. So that was his initial concept. And he decided to make it a gorilla because he thought gorillas had more personality than baboons did. Gorillas at that time were not quite well known. They were almost still a little bit like mythical creatures. The first Western person saw a gorilla in the very early 20th century or perhaps late in the 19th century. So people just didn’t know that much about them. That’s important, because Cooper knew he could kind of make them into whatever he wanted.

He also wanted to have the gorilla at some point kidnap a woman from the expedition. That was kind of the myth of gorillas back then — is they were like stealing women and running off with them into the jungle. So he thought that would be a good thing to have too.