and is eventually killed by aeroplanes. Upon reaching Kong's body, Denham hears a bystander commenting the aeroplanes got him. He takes one last look at Kong and says, "It wasn't the aeroplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast." The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, published the same year, elaborates that Denham escapes lawsuits by blaming Kong's rampage on the company that made the chrome steel chains which failed to contain him. Denham returns to Skull Island to lead a scientific expedition in 1935, along with seven successive expeditions for the next decade, escaping before the island is finally swallowed up by the sea. Kong: King of Skull Island Authorized by the Merian C. Cooper estate, Kong: King of Skull Island is a prequel/sequel novel to D.W. Lovelace's novelization of the 1933 movie, thus requiring it to completely ignore the existence of the film The Son of Kong (the novel had slipped into the public domain decades earlier, but the films had not). The story features Skull Island still in existence in 1957 and adds Denham having a wife and a son, whom he was forced to abandon to escape the Kong-related lawsuits and criminal charges. The novel's central character is Denham's son, Vincent, and Carl himself is in the story only at the beginning and near the end. The novel adds some detail to Denham's life, such as his year of birth (1896). Musical Carl Denham's Giant Monsters In Frank J. Dello Stritto's 2019 novel, Carl Denham's Giant Monsters, an aged Denham is living in seclusion on Kotok, a small island in Indonesia. Two tourists stumble on him, and over the next two years, Denham relates his life story before, during and after Kong. As a young man, among his adventures are travelling the Amazon with Professor Challenger, and Theodore Roosevelt, and working as a newspaper reporter covering the Scopes Monkey Trial. After Kong, he was forced into hiding to evade US jurisdiction but did travel with Carl Maia and his team to the Amazon's Black Lagoon, and to the Himalayas with Tom Friend and John Rollason in search of the Yeti. The tale ends with him embarking on one last adventure. Real-world history Casting In his review of the 2005 remake, film critic Roger Ebert remarked that Armstrong's performance was reminiscent of filmmaker Cecil B. de Mille, while Jack Black was reminiscent of Orson Welles.