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47 free King Kong trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This King Kong trivia quiz covers nine decades of the giant ape, from Merian C. Cooper's 1933 original to the MonsterVerse. The easy questions ask which building Kong climbs, who screamed as Ann Darrow, what the last line of the 1933 film is, which twin towers replaced the Empire State Building in 1976 and who directed the 2005 remake. From there it moves through the making of the films: the stop-motion puppets, the man inside the 1976 ape suit, the New Zealand theatres that stood in for Broadway and the Japanese studio that pitted Kong against Godzilla. The hard end is for people who own the Criterion disc: the hoax gorilla documentary that convinced RKO to greenlight Kong, the writer credited with a screenplay he barely started, the Komodo dragon book that inspired the whole idea, the copyright slip that put the story in the public domain, the Donkey Kong lawsuit Universal lost, the albino Little Kong and the largest puppet ever built for the stage. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on the character, the franchise, the 1933, 1976 and 2005 films, Son of Kong, King Kong vs. Godzilla, King Kong Escapes, Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla vs. Kong, Fay Wray, Merian C. Cooper and Willis O'Brien before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Godzilla, classic monster movies and Peter Jackson quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the original 1933 film, Kong makes his last stand on top of which New York skyscraper?
The Empire State Building
Kong climbs The Empire State Building, which opened in 1931 as the world's tallest building, and is shot down from its summit by biplanes in the 1933 film's finale.
Q 02Which actress played Ann Darrow, the 'golden woman' offered to Kong, in the 1933 film?
Fay Wray
Fay Wray played Ann Darrow, the out-of-work actress Denham recruits for his voyage; she had already starred for the same filmmakers in The Most Dangerous Game (1932).
Q 03What is the famous final line of the 1933 King Kong, spoken by Carl Denham over the ape's body?
'It was Beauty killed the Beast.'
Denham's closing line, 'It was Beauty killed the Beast.', answers a policeman who credits the airplanes and caps the beauty-and-the-beast theme the film was built around.
Q 04The 1933 King Kong was directed and produced by Ernest B. Schoedsack and which other filmmaker?
Merian C. Cooper
Cooper had wanted to make a gorilla film since 1929 and originally hoped to shoot in Africa and on Komodo.
Q 05Who created the 1933 stop-motion effects that brought Kong and the dinosaurs to life?
Willis O'Brien
Willis O'Brien animated Kong frame by frame, moving jointed armatures a fraction between exposures, and combined the miniatures with live actors using rear projection and glass paintings.
Q 06Roughly how tall were the stop-motion Kong models used in the 1933 film?
14 to 18 inches
The stop-motion Kong models measured roughly 14 to 18 inches, built on jointed metal armatures padded with cotton, latex and rabbit fur that rippled as animators handled it.
Q 07Which studio produced and released the 1933 King Kong?
RKO Radio Pictures
RKO Radio Pictures, in receivership during the Depression, produced and released the film in March 1933; its strong first run was a major boost to the struggling studio.
Q 08A book about which animals did Cooper call King Kong's 'most important influence'?
Komodo dragons
Komodo dragons were the subject of W. Douglas Burden's 1927 book The Dragon Lizards of Komodo, which gave the film's co-creator the idea of a gorilla fighting giant lizards.
Q 09What 1930 hoax 'documentary' about women sacrificed to gorillas is said to have persuaded RKO to greenlight Kong?
Ingagi
Ingagi (1930) faked scenes of African women offered to gorillas and grossed a fortune; its success helped convince the studio that a gorilla-and-woman picture would sell.
Q 10Which thriller writer got story credit on King Kong despite dying soon after a rough draft?
Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace, the prolific British thriller writer, died of pneumonia in February 1932 weeks after delivering a draft; the credits still read 'from an idea conceived by' him.
Q 11Worried about similarities to King Kong, RKO bought the rights to which Arthur Conan Doyle prehistoric-creatures novel?
The Lost World
The Lost World, Doyle's 1912 novel about dinosaurs surviving on a South American plateau, had been filmed in 1925 with stop-motion effects that Kong's team would surpass.
Q 12Who composed the score for the 1933 King Kong, one of the first great symphonic film scores?
Max Steiner
Max Steiner, the Vienna-born composer who later scored Gone with the Wind (1939) and Casablanca (1942), wrote Kong's leitmotif-driven score, a landmark in sound-era film music.
Q 13The 1933 King Kong premiered on 2 March 1933 at the RKO Roxy and which other New York venue?
Q 21The 1976 remake replaced the original film's climactic skyscraper with which then-new landmark?
The World Trade Center
The World Trade Center's twin towers, then only a few years old, host the remake's finale: Kong leaps from one tower to the other before helicopter gunships shoot him down.
Q 22Which producer, famous for lavish spectacles, made the 1976 King Kong?
Dino De Laurentiis
Dino De Laurentiis, the Italian producer of epics like War and Peace (1956) and Barbarella, hired Lorenzo Semple Jr. to write the remake and released it through Paramount in December 1976.
Q 23The 1976 remake launched the film career of which actress, who played the castaway Dwan?
Jessica Lange
Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall, open only since December 1932, screened the premiere simultaneously with the neighbouring RKO Roxy, giving the film both of Manhattan's largest new theatres.
Q 14In which year was King Kong added to the US National Film Registry?
1991
In 1991 the Library of Congress placed King Kong on the National Film Registry as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant, alongside the same year's inductees Chinatown and City Lights.
Q 15The 1933 sequel Son of Kong, released the same year, features Denham finding what on Skull Island?
A giant albino gorilla
A giant albino gorilla, nicknamed 'Little Kong' and roughly 12 feet tall, befriends Denham on Skull Island and drowns holding him above the waves when the island sinks in an earthquake.
Q 16Fay Wray was born on a ranch in which country?
Canada
She was born in 1907 on a ranch near Cardston, Alberta, Canada; the family moved to Utah during her childhood and then to Los Angeles, where she began acting in her teens.
Q 17A co-director of King Kong (1933) once founded a volunteer air squadron for which country's war against Soviet Russia?
Poland
Poland's Kościuszko Squadron, which he co-founded in 1919 to fly for Poland against the Bolsheviks, earned him the Virtuti Militari; he was shot down in 1920 and escaped Soviet captivity in 1921.
Q 18The stop-motion animator of the 1933 King Kong won his only Academy Award for which 1949 giant-ape film?
Mighty Joe Young
Mighty Joe Young (1949) earned the Academy Award for Best Special Effects; its animator's young assistant on the film was Ray Harryhausen, who did most of the animation.
Q 19Which Japanese studio made King Kong vs. Godzilla in 1962?
Toho
Toho made King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) after producer John Beck brought it a treatment in which Kong fought a giant Frankenstein monster; the Japanese studio swapped in Godzilla.
Q 20In the 1967 Toho and Rankin/Bass film in which the ape escapes, he battles a robotic double called what?
Mechani-Kong
Mechani-Kong, a robot double built by the villain Dr. Who, fights the real Kong atop Tokyo Tower in King Kong Escapes, a spin-off of the animated King Kong Show that premiered in 1966.
Jessica Lange made her film debut as Dwan and was mocked by some critics for it, but later won Academy Awards for Tootsie (1982) and Blue Sky (1994).
Q 24Who wore the ape suit and physically played Kong in the 1976 film, as well as doing its makeup effects?
Rick Baker
Rick Baker, later a seven-time Oscar-winning makeup artist, wore the ape suit he helped design for most of Kong's screen time; the 40-foot mechanical Kong barely worked and appears in only a few shots.
Q 25In the 1976 version, what kind of company mounts the expedition that discovers Kong's island?
Oil prospectors
Oil prospectors from the Petrox corporation, led by executive Fred Wilson, sail for an uncharted island hidden under a permanent fog bank hoping to find a huge petroleum deposit.
Q 26Besides a Special Achievement Award for effects, how many competitive Oscar nominations did the 1976 King Kong get?
Two
Two competitive nominations followed, for Best Cinematography (Richard H. Kline) and Best Sound, alongside the Special Achievement Award for its visual effects; it won neither competitive category.
Q 27Who directed the 2005 remake of King Kong?
Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson, a lifelong fan of the 1933 original, directed the 2005 remake straight after completing The Lord of the Rings trilogy; his version runs more than three hours.
Q 28Who provided the motion-capture performance for Kong in the 2005 film?
Andy Serkis
Andy Serkis, fresh from playing Gollum, performed Kong through motion capture and also appears on screen as Lumpy, the cook aboard the tramp steamer.
Q 29The 2005 King Kong's budget rose during production to roughly what final figure?
$207 million
The budget reached $207 million, the highest for any film at that point, after extra visual-effects work and a longer running time pushed it past the original $175 million.
Q 30The 2005 King Kong won three Academy Awards, for Best Visual Effects and which two others?
Sound Editing and Sound Mixing
Sound Editing and Sound Mixing went to the film at the 2006 ceremony alongside Visual Effects; its remaining nomination, for Art Direction, lost to Memoirs of a Geisha.