James Cameron to Direct Avatar

Posted on January 15, 2007

James Cameron has finally announced that his next feature film project will be Avatar, which Newsweek describes as "a $195 million action-adventure film set on a distant planet, shot in digital 3-D, using a camera he developed." Cameron hasn't made a movie in ten years, since his worldwide hit Titanic won 11 Oscars and grossed $1.8 billion.

Newsweek: Why has it taken so long for you to direct another feature film?

James Cameron: Well, there's not a quick answer. I've done 70 ocean expeditions in the last 10 years, and I love that world. I've been living out a kind of childhood dream of doing real exploration. But I always knew that I would come back to feature filmmaking. We're announcing "Avatar" right now, but I've been working on it for a year and half.

A year and a half?! I can't believe you kept that quiet.

[Laughs] I can't either. We've got, like, a hundred people working it full time. But they're pretty dedicated. They believe in this thing. It's like a cult. [Laughs] And they were told in no uncertain terms to keep their mouths shut.

*****

Avatar won't be released until summer 2009. That's a huge time commitment.

It will be four years total for me, yeah. But I've wanted to make this movie from the time I wrote the treatment 11 years ago. I was just biding my time for when it was going to be technically possible. I'm so invested in the 3-D, and I love the challenge of creating an alien culture. We're creating a world from scratch, so it's really fun.

Four more years? We're sure we'll see Avatar when it comes out, but we really wish he'd speed things up.


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