James Cameron News

[goldenboy]

GIOVANNI RIBISI JOINS JAMES CAMERON'S CAST FOR 'AVATAR'

The 'LOST IN TRANSLATION' actor joins Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver

By TONY WHITT, Contributing Editor

Published 9/24/2007

LOCATION: Another planet – in 3-D, no less!

THE SKINNY: Looks like James Cameron’s latest project is turning into the sort of movie that everybody wants to be in. It already boasts the likes of Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, and Michelle Rodriguez, and this weekend it was announced that another major actor has joined the cast.

Giovanni Ribisi has joined the cast of Cameron’s big-budget 3-D epic, playing a character named Selfridge, who’s described as “passive-aggressive”. Nope, Ribisi’s never played anybody like that before… The movie is set on a distant planet where a group of humans must fight the planet’s indigenous population. Kind of like the Iraqi war, only this time there’s a chance of winning. The movie’s budgeted at $190 million and will blend live action with a new technique Cameron has developed. But you’ll have to wait till May 22, 2009 to see Ribisi – or, indeed, anybody in the movie. That’s one heck of a long time to wait for another Cameron movie about a bug hunt.
iF Magazine (http://www.ifmagazine.com/new.asp?article=5106)

[goldenboy]

Weta teams up with big guns

Oct 2, 2007 9:47 PM

It's a project that will bring Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron to town and will be made, in part, in Wellington.

Avatar is being touted as a futuristic, ground-breaking film, and as Weta digital's visual effects maestro Joe Letteri told ONE News, Weta, along with hundreds of Kiwi contractors are helping to make it happen.

The film is Cameron's latest project. His last film was Titanic - the very same Titanic that was released 12 years ago and is still the highest grossing film ever made.

It has a reported budget of $260 million and Cameron has come half way round the world to make a large chunk of it in New Zealand, where he can get creative collaboration and of course, ground-breaking technology says Weta digital.

"One of the big things we are trying to do with Avatar is to do this movie completely as a 3-D movie... 3-D in the old days used to be funny glasses with the red and the green and two projectors and all that sort of thing, but we have a new system now for doing digital projection for 3D films," says Letteri, a multi-Oscar winner and a digital effects pioneer.

Letteri, says Cameron built a new camera system to shoot the movie entirely in 3D. "It will be a completely new experience for the audience," he says.

It will be a new experience for theatre owners too. No theatre in the world can as yet handle the technology. they will need to upgrade in order to even get the film on the screen.

Cameron will of course, at some point, be in town but as of yet that is still all top secret information.

"It's a science fiction story so a lot of it happens in the future and there are just other worlds and other realities that we have to create, plus a lot of characters and creatures. I probably can't tell you any more than that but it should look pretty fantastic when we're finished" says Letteri.
Weta teams up with big gun | ENTERTAINMENT | NEWS | tvnz.co.nz (http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/1387682)

[goldenboy]

$200m Avatar starts filming in Wellington

By DAVE BURGESS - The Dominion Post | Wednesday, 17 October 2007

Oscar-winning director James Cameron has arrived in Wellington in time for the world's first sneak peek at his new movie Avatar.

The Dominion Post understands Cameron is in Wellington to start shooting scenes for the million science fiction film.

A secret Wellington location was uncovered yesterday where 80 imitation-gun-toting, camo-wearing stuntpeople and actors had gathered for days of rehearsals.

The men and women had split into pairs to learn how to provide covering fire for their partner. The manoeuvres included plenty of macho shouting and wide-legged posturing.

Cameron is shooting the film using a new 3D process and will feature a blend of live-action photography and virtual photorealistic production techniques invented by his team.

The film will also feature six computer-generated actors known as "synthespians".

Some work on the film has already been done in Los Angeles and Hawaii.

Peter Jackson's Weta Digital is supervising the special effects, and 31 days of additional live photography will be carried out on Weta's soundstages. The cast includes Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi, Zoe Saldana and Michelle Rodriguez.

The film, written by Cameron, is about an ex-marine who finds himself amid hostilities on an alien planet.

As an Avatar - a human mind in an alien body - he falls in love with a local girl and joins resistance fighters in a battle for survival.

Cameron's blockbuster, Titanic, holds the world box office record for a film, at .8 billion. It won 11 Oscars in 1998, a record it shares with Ben-Hur and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
$200m Avatar starts filming in Wellington - New Zealand's source for entertainment news, gossip & music, movie & book reviews on Stuff.co.nz (http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4240081a1860.html)

[goldenboy]

Alien hotness (http://www.joblo.com/alien-hotness)

James Cameron's monumental sci-fi epic AVATAR is coming next year... no, wait! Not until May 2009? Gah! So I guess this really is an early glimpse of the flick's alien species (assuming it's actual concept art, as it was presented), which means we have a long time to wait for verification.

The movie follows a war veteran dispatched to a distant world, where he and others clash with indigenous humanoid lifeforms, some of whom are apparently sexy blue bioluminescent babes with tails. Nice planet. The FX-loaded 3-D film stars Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Matt Gerald, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang, CCH Pounder, Michelle Rodriguez and the stunning Zoe Saldana, possibly playing this lithe extraterrestrial lady.

Hmm. She kinda looks like something you'd see on a sci-fi paperback novel from the sixties or something. I dunno.

[goldenboy]

Thank goodness.

Rumor Killer: James Cameron on Avatar Concept Art

Posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 5:16 pm by: Peter Sciretta
Last week conceptual artwork which was supposedly from James Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic film Avatar “leaked” online. We hoped and prayed that it wasn’t real, as it wasn’t too impressive (actually it looked a lot like Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mother in Beowulf). Well Cameron e-mailed the guys at AintItCool to clear the air and dispel the rumor:

“You recently posted some artwork of a supposed Na’vi character. Don’t know where you got it but it’s spurious. I’ve never seen that piece of art. We had a lot of free-ranging conceptual stuff in the early days of design two and a half years ago, and it might be something that was done then but not shown to me, but it is definitely not remotely our actual character design. Aside from two legs, two arms and a tail, it doesn’t have any features in common with our final designs. If I had to guess I’d say it’s a piece of fan art based on the description of the Na’vi from the old treatment which was leaked twelve years ago. That description is obsolete relative to the shooting script, since things have changed a lot over the year
Rumor Killer: James Cameron on Avatar Concept Art | /Film (http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/12/03/rumor-killer-james-cameron-on-avatar-concept-art/)

[goldenboy]

Cameron's Avatar Delayed

by Josh Grossberg
Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:23:57 PM PST

Film geeks anxiously awaiting James Cameron's first big-screen spectacular in nearly 15 years are going to have to wait just a little bit longer.

On Wednesday, 20th Century Fox announced it will postpone the Oscar-winning helmer's highly anticipated 3-D sci-fi action film Avatar, from May 22, 2009 until Dec. 18, 2009.

And for a change, the delay doesn't have to do with the ongoing writers' strike.

The reason, according to the Hollywood Reporter, is to allow more time to complete what are expected to be some of the most elaborate 3-D special effects ever conceived.

Replacing Avatar as the studio's Memorial Day tent pole will be the Ben Stiller-powered sequel Night at the Museum 2: Escape from the Smithsonian.

For Cameron, the scheduling swticheroo must feel like déjà vu.

A decade ago, Fox pushed back Titanic from July to Dec. 19, 1997, following a slew of production problems that caused the budget to balloon to $200 million—the costliest film ever at the time.

Unlike Titanic, which made headlines for bean-counting studio execs, this time Fox says the move is purely strategic.

The erstwhile King of the World will be given more time to perfect specially designed performance-capture software with Peter Jackson's WETA.

The studio also claims that a Christmas release could benefit Avatar because it's expected there will be more than 4,000 3-D screens up and running by that time.

"This is a win-win for us," Hutch Parker, vice chairman of Fox Film Group, told the Reporter. "Avatar goes to the Titanic date in December, which was obviously auspicious for Jim and us, and by the time of the release, there will be more worldwide 3-D screens available."

(Titanic remains the all-time worldwide box-office champ, with $1.8 billion in ticket sales.)

The shift will also keep Avatar away fromDreamWorks and Paramount's animated 3-D offering, Monsters vs. Aliens. That film was initially scheduled to open on a week before Cameron's adventure on May 15, but the studios moved it to Mar. 27 to keep from having to compete with Avatar for 3-D locations and to take advantage of spring break and the Easter holiday.

Avatar focuses on a band of soldiers fighting an alien battalion on a distant planet. The film reunites Cameron with Aliens star Sigourney Weaver; the cast also includes Aussie actor Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Michelle Rodriguez and Giovanni Ribisi.
E! News - Cameron's Avatar Delayed - James Cameron | Sigourney Weaver | Michelle Rodriguez | Giovanni Ribisi | Ben Stiller (http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=b4abe90f-4008-4376-9928-ce7c894b8d89&sid=fd-news)

[goldenboy]

James Cameron Gives Avatar Update, Calls Film “Groundbreaking”

Posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 2:08 pm by: Hunter Stephenson

Director James Cameron shot AICN an email today to dismiss recent promotional-like artwork as fake and gives a very upbeat update on all things Avatar, his hotly anticipated 3D space adventure due December of next year.

“We’ve wrapped principal, and most of the live action portion of the movie is already cut. It’s starting to look and sound like a movie. I’m ecstatic with the performances and the look. The cast chemistry worked out perfectly.”

He goes on to say that he’s currently camped in New Zealand working on special effects, which make up a significant portion of the flick’s $200 million budget, with feted special effects house Weta.

“The Weta animators are ON FIRE, and seeing the world and the creatures come to life is what keeps us going. There’s a spirit on this film, an esprit de corps amongst the virtual team, that comes from knowing we’re doing something absolutely groundbreaking. It’s why people still have good morale after working on this thing for two years or more. And we still have more than a year and a half to go. I don’t know if this will be a good film, great film, awful film, but I can say with absolute certainty that you will see stuff you’ve never imagined, and that the process of making this film will generate a lot of interest within the technical side of the biz.”

I trust Cameron’s words more than many a director and there are not many upcoming projects that can beat Avatar in my mind. In a way, I hope he gives audiences the soon-to-be-legendary sci-fi knockout that George Lucas played up with the prequels.
James Cameron Gives Avatar Update, Calls Film | /Film (http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/02/20/james-cameron-gives-avatar-update-calls-film-groundbreaking/)

[N4H]

I actually waste money to see a movie in an actual theatre about once a year (don't like the commercials). This is the one I'll be forking over dough for. Sounds wild.

[goldenboy]

Sigourney Weaver says James Cameron's Avatar sets new standard

Posted: April 15, 2008, 1:34 PM by Bob Thompson

More than two decades later, James Cameron reunites with Sigourney Weaver. And Weaver says the wait was worth it as she recently wrapped Cameron’s breakthrough sci-fi 3-D extravaganza Avatar in New Zealand. Weaver, of course, last worked with Cameron on Aliens in 1986. But Avatar is something else again.

“Well, it was quite an adventure,” says Weaver who also co-stars in the upcoming Tina Fey comedy Baby Mama. “Avatar was a demanding shoot, but it was very exhilarating because we were all doing something we had never done before. You look at these 3-D dailies and they’re so beautiful.”

In the sci-fi thriller set for release next May, Weaver plays a scientist wondering whether the discovery of new extraterrestrial planetary life forms could lead to mankind’s extinction. Complicated proceedings for sure but somehow Cameron and Weaver found time to recapture their chemistry. “We picked up like we’d never been apart, like an old married couple,” she says. “I admire him. He invented these 3-D cameras, operated them on almost every shot.”

The 58-year-old actress reports that the director also “designed the whole concept of this different world and invented so many of the creatures” who exist in almost another dimension.

Initially, Weaver hesitated when Cameron invited her to take on the role. She knew the filming would be an isolating experience based in New Zealand and grueling because of the special effects demands.

“He had thought about making my character a man as well, but had decided in the end that he wanted it to be a woman,” she says. When she finally read the script she was overwhelmed by the story and the part.

“I teased him because to me I’m playing Jim Cameron in the movie as this kind of brilliant, approach-driven, idealistic perfectionist,” Weaver says. “But that same somebody has a great heart underneath. So I have to say I was always kind of channeling him.”
Bob Thompson: Sigourney Weaver says James Cameron's Avatar sets new standard - The Ampersand
(http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2008/04/15/bob-thompson-sigourney-weaver-says-james-cameron-s-avatar-sets-new-standard.aspx)