50 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 50 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
Four biplanes shoot him down; the building's lights were dimmed for 15 minutes in 2004 in memory of Fay Wray.
Q 02Which actress played Ann Darrow, the 'golden woman' offered to Kong, in the 1933 film?
Fay Wray
She recorded all of her character's screams in a single session.
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 corrects a policeman who says the airplanes did it, closing the beauty-and-the-beast theme Cooper built the story 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
He later won an Oscar for Mighty Joe Young in 1950 and had first proposed Kong by painting a picture of a giant gorilla carrying a woman.
Q 06Roughly how tall were the stop-motion Kong models used in the 1933 film?
14 to 18 inches
The armatures were padded with cotton, latex and rabbit fur, which is why Kong's fur seems to ripple from frame to frame.
Q 07Which studio produced and released the 1933 King Kong?
RKO Radio Pictures
The studio was near bankruptcy in the Depression, and the film's $650,000 profit on first release helped keep it afloat.
Q 08A book about which animals did Cooper call King Kong's 'most important influence'?
Komodo dragons
Reading The Dragon Lizards of Komodo gave him 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
Cooper never listed it as an influence, but its huge profits suggested 'gorillas plus sexy women in peril' would sell.
Q 10Which thriller writer got screenplay credit for King Kong despite dying a month after delivering a rough draft?
Edgar Wallace
Ruth Rose, who had never written a screenplay, rewrote most of the dialogue and added the love story, but Cooper kept his promise to credit Wallace.
Q 11Worried about similarities to King Kong, RKO bought the rights to which Arthur Conan Doyle prehistoric-creatures novel?
The Lost World
Cooper then feared linking Doyle's name to Kong would make it seem stale, and the estate agreed not to be associated with it.
Q 12Who composed the score for the 1933 King Kong, one of the first great symphonic film scores?
Max Steiner
Reviewers said the music's blare kept audiences 'in a state of turmoil' alongside Fay Wray's screaming.
Q 13The 1933 King Kong premiered on 2 March 1933 at the RKO Roxy and which other New York venue?
Radio City Music Hall
Q 21On release in 1962, King Kong vs. Godzilla became what in Japan?
The second-highest-grossing Japanese film ever
It grossed ¥352 million and remains the most-attended Godzilla film in Japan.
Q 22In the 1967 Toho and Rankin/Bass film in which the ape escapes, he battles a robotic double called what?
Mechani-Kong
It was a Toho co-production with Rankin/Bass, spun off from their animated King Kong Show, which had premiered on ABC in 1966.
Q 23The 1976 remake replaced the original film's climactic skyscraper with which then-new landmark?
The World Trade Center
It opened to rave reviews for its animation and score.
Q 14The 1933 novelisation of King Kong fell into the public domain for what reason?
It was published without a copyright notice
That slip later helped Nintendo defeat Universal's Donkey Kong lawsuit; the film's own US copyright runs to 2029.
Q 15In which year was King Kong added to the US National Film Registry?
1991
Scenes cut by censors had been restored in 1970, and Rotten Tomatoes later ranked it the greatest horror film ever.
Q 16The 1933 sequel Son of Kong, released the same year, features Denham finding what on Skull Island?
A giant albino gorilla
'Little Kong' is less than half Kong's height but still more than twice as tall as a man.
Q 17Fay Wray was born on a ranch in which country?
Canada
Her family moved from Alberta to Utah when she was a child; her father came from Kingston upon Hull.
Q 18A co-director of King Kong (1933) once founded a volunteer air squadron for which country's war against Soviet Russia?
Poland
He was shot down and held as a Soviet prisoner of war; he later co-invented the Cinerama widescreen process.
Q 19The stop-motion animator of the 1933 King Kong won his only Academy Award for which 1949 giant-ape film?
Mighty Joe Young
His young assistant on that film was Ray Harryhausen, who carried stop-motion into the next generation.
Q 20Which Japanese studio made King Kong vs. Godzilla in 1962?
Toho
The idea grew from a Willis O'Brien outline in which Kong fought a giant Frankenstein monster.
More than 30,000 people turned up one night to be extras for the death scene at the towers.
Q 24Which producer, famous for lavish spectacles, made the 1976 King Kong?
Dino De Laurentiis
He hired TV writer Lorenzo Semple Jr. to script it and cast Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin and newcomer Jessica Lange.
Q 25The 1976 remake launched the film career of which actress, who played the castaway Dwan?
Jessica Lange
She reportedly took some negative publicity for the debut, then went on to win two Oscars.
Q 26Who wore the ape suit and physically played Kong in the 1976 film, as well as doing its makeup effects?
Rick Baker
Rambaldi's 40-foot mechanical Kong of aluminium, latex, horse tails and hydraulics proved almost impossible to operate.
Q 27In the 1976 version, what kind of company mounts the expedition that discovers Kong's island?
Oil prospectors
Petrox executive Fred Wilson is chasing a suspected oil deposit under a permanent cloud bank in the Indian Ocean.
Q 28Besides a Special Achievement Award for effects, how many competitive Oscar nominations did the 1976 King Kong get?
Two
It also picked up two competitive nominations.
Q 29Who directed the 2005 remake of King Kong?
Peter Jackson
Universal first approached him in 1995; he made it after The Lord of the Rings, in his native New Zealand.
Q 30Who provided the motion-capture performance for Kong in the 2005 film?
Andy Serkis
Fresh from playing Gollum, he also appears on screen as the ship's cook, Lumpy.