[link=http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31185]AICN story here, w/ NYT link[/link]


[blockquote]LOS ANGELES, Jan. 8 ? James Cameron, the director whose ?Titanic? set a record for ticket sales around the world, will join 20th Century Fox in tackling a similarly ambitious and costly film, ?Avatar,? which will test new technologies on a scale unseen before in Hollywood, the studio and the filmmaker said today.

The film, with a budget of close to $200 million, is an original science fiction story that will be shown in3D in conventional theaters. The story pits a human army against an alien army on a distant planet, using live actors and digital technology to make a large cast of virtual creatures who convey emotion as authentically as humans.

Earlier movies like the ?The Lord of the Rings? did so on a limited basis, while those like ?The Polar Express? have used live actors to drive animated images with so-called ?motion capture? technology. But none has gone as far as ?Avatar? will do to create an entirely photorealistic world, complete with virtual characters on that scale, Mr. Cameron said in a telephone interview.

?This film is a true hybrid ? a full live-action shoot, with C.G. characters in C.G. and live environments,? he said, referring computer-generated images. ?Ideally at the end of the of day the audience has no idea which they?re looking at.?

The making of ?Titanic,? Mr. Cameron?s last full-blown Hollywood feature, was the stuff of movie legend. The film, released in 1997, went far over its planned cost to become the most expensive production that had then been made. But it went on to become a historic success, taking in a record-breaking $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office, and also winning 11 Oscars, including an award for best picture.

Mr. Cameron said that he had taken care to avoid the problems he encountered on his last gargantuan production, and that he was already four months into shooting the nonprincipal scenes by the time Fox gave final approval to the project today.

?I?ve looked long and hard at ?Titanic? and other effects-related things I?ve done where they?ve drifted budget-wise,? he said. ?This has been designed from the ground up to avoid those pitfalls. Will we have other pitfalls? Yes, probably.?

For its aliens, ?Avatar? will rely on characters that will be designed in the computer, but played by human actors, with tiny cameras on headsets recording their performances to be inserted into a virtual world.

Mr. Cameron has already devised revolutionary methods to shoot the film, which he has been quietly doing since the fall, and expects to create still more methods to bring to life the vision of a completely realistic alien world. He and computer experts have designed a camera that allows the director to observe the performance of the actors-as-aliens in the virtual environment in real time.

Sam Worthington, a young Australian actor, has been named to play the lead, as a paralyzed former marine who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself. The avatar is not paralyzed, but is an alien ? 10 feet tall and blue. Zoe Saldana, another relative unknown, has been chosen as the love interest.

?We could do it with make-up, in a ?Star Trek? manner, we could put rubber on his face, but I wasn?t interested in doing it that way,? said Mr. Cameron. ?With the new tools, we can create a humanoid character that is anything we imagine it to be ? beautiful, elegant, graceful, powerful ? evocative of us, but still with an emotional connection.?

The live-action shoot with actors will begin in April, with major effects being done by Weta, the filmmaker Peter Jackson?s New Zealand-based effects company, which worked on his ?Lord of the Rings.? The film is scheduled for release in summer 2009.

?This will launch an entire new way of seeing and exhibiting movies,? said Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. ?It?s once again Jim is transforming the medium. Jim?s not just a filmmaker; every one of his films have pushed the envelope, in its aesthetic and in te

 

In other news George Lucas had a good laugh.

 

Hey, at least it's James Cameron making a movie! You'd have been forgiven to think the man had died since Titanic!

At least he won't have to sell his soul to Satan this time around to do it.

 

Hey, I enjoyed Ghosts of the Abyss. Very informational, and the 3D was cool if not distracting.

edit: I kan't spel

 

I wonder if he'll go over budget again?

 

I want $200 million. I'm going to put a shelf up.

 

Sounds cool. Give it a shot.

 

Cameron was out obsessing over the Titanic wreckage for a few years.

 

Well, it's too bad that I can't see 3D (I have that depth perception problem in one eye).

I hope it comes out in regular format.

 

And here I was hoping this would be some sort of Avatar: The Last Airbender movie. I probably would have been more interested.

 

Oh that sucks dude ...

So you can't play video games or anything like that?

 

Hmmmm... This has got disaster written all over it, I fear. The critics will go after this remorselessly, I should imagine and anyway, Cameron is not the best director out there by any means. I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the biggest flops of all time....

 

^I was gonna say that.

 

Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, 1997.

 

This film could literally either make or break this technology in moviemaking.

 

By rights TITANIC should have been a flop, or at the very least nowhere nearly as sucessful was it was. In my view it really is a very, very average movie and thats at best. I doubt AVATAR will be another TITANIC, we know just by the fact that its Sci-Fi and will be a complete CGI'fest that its not going to pull in the demorgraphics that TITANIC pulled in.

 

I don't get these snide remarks: Cameron has done plenty (Terminator 2, True Lies, Titantic, Aliens) to earn my trust, at least.

 

In my view it really is a very, very average movie

Titanic was hardly an average movie. It was huge in almost every aspect.

 

Including length



I really don't care about the technology, but if the film looks good I'll go see it. Simple as that.

 

Except DiCaprio.

 

I actually just read the vague story outline for "Avatar", this evening...

In my opinion, Cameron should've just stuck to working on "Battle Angel Alita". It certainly makes more sense than a 10ft. tall blue alien.

 

I trust James Cameron a lot. This is the man who gave us TERMINATOR and ALIENS as well as the sufficiently entertaining ABYSS and TRUE LIES popcorn flicks. And, of course, the masterpiece: TITANIC. Something tells me he's not about to screw up on his first film in ten years. The fact that he's also trying to introduce a new realm to explore (3-D) for cinema is also very promising. Will downloads onto computers be able to offer the same 3-D? I'm not sure.

 

*cautiously decides to reserve judgement until more concrete information on the project and its story becomes available*

 

Harry Knowles is interviewing Cameron (maybe even presently), so a new interview should be up on AICN shortly.

 

Sounds a lot like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within to me.

I expect it to be a similar disaster.