Filming has kicked off in a quiet Philadelphian suburb for Peter Jackson's latest project, The Lovely Bones.

The Dreamworks film is based on the best-selling Alice Sebold novel and tells the story of a teenage Philadelphia girl, Susie Salmon, who watches over her suburban family after being brutally raped and murdered.

Filming started last Tuesday in Malvern, Philadelphia, a small borough, home to a population of around 3000 people.

The film's publicist, Claire Raskind, told the Herald on Sunday the production was "running very successfully" but there was a lot of work ahead for the team over the next couple of months.

She declined to comment on a last-minute casting change which saw The Notebook actor Ryan Gosling quit the film, supposedly because of "creative differences" with director Jackson.

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