The world has got its first glimpse of heaven, or at least the version according to Kiwi movie director Peter Jackson.

Jackson's heaven has been revealed in the first official image from his next film, The Lovely Bones, due to be released in New Zealand on Boxing Day.

The photograph shows Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, who plays murdered 14-year-old Susie Salmon, standing among the clouds and looking toward a blaze of light.

In the film, based on a novel by Alice Sebold, Susie watches from heaven as events unfold after her rape and murder in rural Pennsylvania during the 1970s.

Jackson shot some of the NZ$104 million movie which also stars Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon in Pennsylvania, as well as Wellington. Heaven was created and shot at his Miramar studios.

Jackson told USA Today he had stuck to Sebold's idea that Susie was caught between heaven and Earth.

"We certainly had no intention of using this movie to paint a definitive picture of what heaven is like, and who resides there," he said.

"She [Susie] is in an 'in-between', as Alice Sebold calls it. We wanted the world to be ruled by Susie's unconscious desires. Susie's 'in-between' begins as a powerful, beautiful and mysterious place it is familiar and strange, comforting and sad. A young 14-year-old girl's idea of 'heaven'.

"But as the film progresses, we see that this place Susie has created for herself has become some kind of prison."

Jackson said the film was different in some aspects to the novel, which has sold more than 10 million copies since it was published in 2002.

"We hope those who know and love the book will take delight in some of the twists and turns that we've made, while still feeling that we've stayed true to Susie and her story."