Peter Jackson omitted a rape scene in 'The Lovely Bones' because he wanted his daughter to see it.

The director, whose latest film is based on Alice Sebold's novel of the same name, claims he couldn't include the graphic sexual encounter in the movie because he wanted it to be accessible to teenagers.

He said: "The film is about a teenager. She's murdered, she goes into an afterlife experience - her in-between - and we wanted to make a film that teenagers could watch.

"I have a daughter... we wanted Katie to be able to see this film. There's a lot of positive aspects of this film, it's not something I wanted to shield our daughter from. I never regarded the movie as being a film about a murder."

Peter, 48, said he didn't want to "stigmatise" the film by including such graphic detail because he thought it would be "repulsive" to show such violence on the big screen.

He added to film website Moviehole: "I have no interest - and I've shot some pretty extreme things in my time with 'Bad Taste' and 'Brain Dead' - there's a certain style and a sense of humour that I believe you can do to get away with that.

"But to do anything that depicted violence towards a young person in a way that was serious. I have no interest in filming it at all."