Avatar (film)

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 This article or section contains information about one or more upcoming films.
The content will change as more information becomes available closer to the release date(s).
This article is about the forthcoming film directed by James Cameron. For the film adaptation of the animated television series, see Avatar: The Last Airbender feature film.
Avatar
Directed by James Cameron
Produced by James Cameron
Jon Landau
Written by James Cameron
Starring Sam Worthington
Zoë Saldaña
Sigourney Weaver
Michelle Rodriguez
Stephen Lang
Music by James Horner
Cinematography Mauro Fiore
Editing by John Refoua
Stephen Rivkin
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) December 18, 2009
Language English
Budget $250–300 million[1]

Avatar is an upcoming 3-D science fiction film directed by James Cameron, due to be released on December 18, 2009.

Contents

[edit] Premise

In director James Cameron's original script treatment of Avatar, a man tries to make his way as a miner by combining with an alien during an interplanetary war in which aliens can make themselves manifest by possessing human bodies – avatars.[2]

When Avatar was titled "Project 880", a casting call was put out in June 2006 with a plot description provided, saying, "In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na'vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and the local culture."[3]

In December 2006, Cameron described Avatar as "a futuristic tale set on a planet 200 years hence [...] an old-fashioned jungle adventure with an environmental conscience [that] aspires to a mythic level of storytelling."[4] The January 2007 press release described the film: "Avatar is also an emotional journey of redemption and revolution. It is the story of a wounded ex-marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in biodiversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival," and "We're creating an entire world, a complete ecosystem of phantasmagorical plants and creatures, and a native people with a rich culture and language."[5]

[edit] Cast

  • Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, "a paralyzed retired Marine who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself... an alien – 10 feet (three meters) tall and blue."[6] Sully is able to be part of the alien world in his avatar, a genetically engineered biological body that can be remotely operated by a human consciousness.[7] Director James Cameron cast the Australian actor after searching the world for promising young actors, preferring relative unknowns to keep the budget down. Worthington auditioned twice early in development,[8] and he has signed on for possible sequels.[5]
  • Zoë Saldaña as an alien Jake initially betrays, but they both fall in love.[5] The character will be entirely computer generated.[9] Saldaña has also signed on for sequels.[5]
  • Sigourney Weaver as Grace, a botanist who mentors Jake Sully.[10] Weaver dyed her hair red for the part.[11] Her character was named Shipley at one point.[12] The character reminded Weaver of Cameron himself, being "very driven and very idealistic".[13]
  • Michelle Rodriguez as an retired Marine pilot. Cameron had desired to work with Rodriguez since he had seen her in Girlfight (2000).[14]
  • Giovanni Ribisi as Selfridge, a passive-aggressive character.[15]
  • Stephen Lang as a Marine Corps colonel. Lang had auditioned for a role in Cameron's Aliens (1986) that he did not get, but the director remembered Lang and cast him into Avatar.[14]
  • Joel David Moore as an anthropologist who studies plant and nature life like Weaver's character.[16]
  • Matt Gerald as the main villain.[17]

Actors Wes Studi, C.C.H. Pounder, Laz Alonso, and Peter Mensah are also in the film.[16] Actor Michael Biehn entered talks with Cameron in March 2007 for a possible role in the film,[18] but his involvement is not confirmed.

[edit] Production

[edit] Development

In 1995, director James Cameron wrote an 80-page scriptment for Avatar.[8] Cameron said his inspiration was "every single science fiction book I read as a kid", particularly striving to update the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series. Cameron saw his story as being about how Western civilizations supplant indigenous cultures, in either active genocidal or passive ways. In Avatar, humanity extends that to other planets.[8] In August 1996, Cameron announced that after completing Titanic, he would film Avatar, which would make use of "synthetic", or computer-generated, actors.[19] The project would cost $100 million and involve at least six actors in leading roles "who appear to be real but do not exist in the physical world".[20] Special effects house Digital Domain, with whom Cameron has a partnership, joined the project, which would begin production in the summer of 1997.[21]

In June 2005, director Cameron was announced to be working on a project tentatively titled "Project 880" parallel to another project, Battle Angel.[22] By December, Cameron said that he planned to film Battle Angel first for a summer 2007 release, and to film "Project 880" for a 2009 release.[23] In February 2006, Cameron said he had switched goals for the two film projects – "Project 880" for 2007 and Battle Angel for 2009. He indicated that the release of "Project 880" would possibly be delayed until 2008.[24] Later that February, James Cameron revealed that "Project 880" was "a retooled version of Avatar", a film that he had tried to make years earlier,[25] citing the technological advances in the creation of computer-generated characters Gollum, King Kong and Davy Jones.[8] Cameron had chosen Avatar over Battle Angel after completing a five-day camera test in the previous year.[26] Cameron's early scriptment for Avatar circulated the Internet for years. When the project was re-announced, copies were subsequently removed from websites.[27] In June 2006, Cameron said that if Avatar was successful, he hoped to make two sequels to the film.[28]

Sister project Wikinews has related news: James Cameron to use Weta Digital for next film

From January to April 2006, Cameron wrote the script. Working with Paul Frommer, linguist and Director of the Center for Management Communication at USC, he developed a whole language and culture for the Na'vi, the indigenous race on Pandora.[8] In July, Cameron announced that he would film Avatar for a summer 2008 release and planned to begin principal photography with an established cast by February 2007.[29] The following August, the visual effects studio Weta Digital signed on to help Cameron produce Avatar.[30] Stan Winston, who had collaborated with Cameron in the past, joined Cameron's Avatar to help with the film's designs.[31] In September, Cameron was announced to use his own Reality Camera System to film in 3-D. The system would use two high-definition cameras in a single camera body to create depth perception.[32]

[edit] Filming and effects

It's this form of pure creation where if you want to move a tree or a mountain or the sky or change the time of day, you have complete control over the elements.
—— James Cameron on virtual filmmaking[33]

In December 2006, Cameron explained that the delay in producing the film since the 1990s had been to wait until the technology necessary to create his project was advanced enough. The director planned to create photo-realistic computer-generated characters by using motion capture animation technology, on which he had been doing work for the past 14 months. Unlike previous performance capture systems, where the digital environment is added after the actors' motions have been captured, Cameron's new virtual camera allows him to directly observe on a monitor how the actors' virtual counterparts interacts with the movie's digital world in real time and adjust and direct the scenes just as if shooting live action; "It’s like a big, powerful game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale."[34] Cameron planned to continue developing the special effects for Avatar, which he hoped would be released in summer 2009. He also gave directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson a chance to test the new technology.[4] Spielberg and George Lucas were also able to visit the set to watch Cameron direct with the equipment.[16]

Other technological innovations includes a performance-capture stage, called The Volume, which is six times larger than previously used and an improved method of capturing facial expressions. The tool is a small individually made skull cap with a tiny camera attached to it, located in front of the actors' face which collects information about their facial expressions and eyes, which is then transmitted to the computers. Besides a real time virtual world, the team is also experimenting with a way of letting computer generated characters interact with real actors on a real, live-action set while shooting live action.[35]

In January 2007, Paramount Pictures announced a live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender under M. Night Shyamalan and said that the project's name had been registered to the Motion Picture Association of America for movie title ownership, though a 20th Century Fox representative for James Cameron's Avatar indicated that the studio owned the movie title.[36] Paramount eventually retitled its film as merely The Last Airbender. [37] In the same month, Fox announced that the studio's Avatar would be filmed in 3D. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments. "Ideally at the end of the day the audience has no idea which they’re looking at," Cameron said. The director indicated that he had already worked four months on nonprincipal scenes for the film. Principal photography began in April,[6] and was done around parts of Los Angeles as well as New Zealand. The live action is shot with the proprietary Fusion digital 3-D camera system developed by Cameron and Vince Pace. According to Cameron, the film will be composed of 60% computer-generated elements and 40% live action, as well as traditional miniatures.[38] The performance-capture photography would last 31 days on a high-tech soundstage in Playa Vista.[26] In October, Cameron was scheduled to shoot live-action in New Zealand[14] for another 31 days.[8]

To create the human mining colony on Pandora, production designers visited the Noble Clyde Boudreaux drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico during June 2007. They photographed, measured and filmed every aspect of the rig, which will be replicated on-screen with photorealistic CGI.[39]

[edit] Music

Composer James Horner will score the film, which will be his third collaboration with Cameron after Aliens and Titanic.[40] Horner recorded parts of the score with a small chorus singing in the alien language Na'vi in March 2008.[41] He is also working with Wanda Bryant, an ethnomusicologist, to create a music culture for the alien race.[42]

[edit] Release

Avatar was originally set for release on May 22, 2009 during filming,[43] but the film was pushed back to December 18, 2009. This was done to allow more post-production time, and to also give more time for theaters worldwide to install 3D projectors.[44]

[edit] Marketing

James Cameron chose Ubisoft to create an Avatar MMORPG for the film, originally scheduled for release in May 2009.[45]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Anne Thompson (2008-09-04). "Studios wary of big budget auteurs", Variety. Retrieved on 6 September 2008. 
  2. ^ Paul Davidson (2006-01-20). "Cameron's Mysterious Project 880", IGN. Retrieved on 18 October 2006. 
  3. ^ "Cameron Casting", Movie City News (2006-06-06). Retrieved on 18 October 2006. 
  4. ^ a b James Rampton (2006-12-20). "James Cameron: King of all he surveys", The Independent. Retrieved on 20 December 2006. 
  5. ^ a b c d 20th Century Fox (2007-01-09). "Cameron's Avatar Starts Filming in April", ComingSoon.net. Retrieved on 13 January 2007. 
  6. ^ a b Sharon Waxman (2007-01-08). "'Titanic' Director Joins Fox on $200 Million Film", The New York Times. 
  7. ^ Anthony Breznican (2007-01-09). "Cameron forges into an alien, on-budget world", USA Today. Retrieved on 13 January 2007. 
  8. ^ a b c d e f Jeff Jensen (2007-01-10). "Great Expectations", Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on 28 January 2007. 
  9. ^ "'Titanic' director's new film set for '09", CNN (2007-01-09). Retrieved on 9 January 2007. 
  10. ^ Clint Morris (2007-08-02). "Sigouney Weaver talks Avatar", Moviehole.net. Retrieved on 2 August 2007. 
  11. ^ Ryan Stewart (2008-02-21). "Exclusive: Sigourney Weaver Looks to the Future", Premiere. Retrieved on 21 February 2008. 
  12. ^ "Things We've Learnt", Empire (February 2008), pp. 27. 
  13. ^ Shawn Adler (2008-02-27). "Sigourney Weaver’s ‘Avatar’ Character Mirrors James Cameron, Actress Says", MTV Movies Blog. Retrieved on 28 February 2008. 
  14. ^ a b c Anne Thompson (2007-08-02). "Lang, Rodriguez armed for 'Avatar'", Variety. Retrieved on 3 August 2007. 
  15. ^ Leslie Simmons (2007-09-21). "'Avatar' has new player with Ribisi", The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved on 21 September 2007. 
  16. ^ a b c Steve Chupnick (2007-08-30). "EXCL: Moore on Cameron's Avatar", ComingSoon.net. Retrieved on 30 August 2007. 
  17. ^ Bryon Perry (2007-11-11). "Matt Gerald", Variety. Retrieved on 12 November 2007. 
  18. ^ Patrick Lee (2007-03-25). "Biehn Talks Possible Avatar Role", Sci Fi Wire. Retrieved on 25 March 2007. 
  19. ^ Judy Hevrdejs; Mike Conklin (1996-08-09). "Channel 2 has Monday morning team in place", Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on 22 December 2006. 
  20. ^ Randy McMullen; Joe Garofoli (1996-08-09). "People", Contra Costa Times. Retrieved on 22 December 2006. 
  21. ^ "Synthetic actors to star in Avatar", St. Petersburg Times (1996-08-12). Retrieved on 22 December 2006. 
  22. ^ Anne Thompson; Sheigh Crabtree (2005-06-14). "Cameron turns to new project", The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved on 18 October 2006. 
  23. ^ Sheigh Crabtree; Tatiana Siegel (2005-12-07). "Cameron ready for 'Battle'", The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved on 18 October 2006. 
  24. ^ Degen Pener (2006-02-17). "He'll Be Back", Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on 18 October 2006. 
  25. ^ Harry Knowles (2006-02-28). "Harry talks to James Cameron, Cracks PROJECT 880, the BATTLE ANGEL trilogy & Cameron's live shoot on Mars!!!", Ain't It Cool News. Retrieved on 18 October 2006. 
  26. ^ a b John Horn (2007-01-08). "Director Cameron to shoot again", Los Angeles Times. 
  27. ^ Mike Sampson (2006-01-17). "Cameron's Project 880 is...", JoBlo.com. Retrieved on 18 October 2006. 
  28. ^ Carroll, Larry (2006-06-29). "'Titanic' Mastermind James Cameron's King-Size Comeback: Two Sci-Fi Trilogies", MTV. Retrieved on 18 October 2006. 
  29. ^ Sheigh Crabtree (2006-07-07). "Cameron comes back with CG extravaganza", The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved on 18 October 2006. 
  30. ^ Lynn Smith (2006-08-04). "Special-Effects Giant Signs on for 'Avatar'", Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on 22 December 2006. 
  31. ^ Duncan, Jody; James Cameron (October 2006). The Winston Effect. Titan Books. ISBN 1845761502. 
  32. ^ Jen Waters (2006-09-28). "Technology adds more in-depth feeling to the movie experience", The Washington Times. Retrieved on 22 December 2006. 
  33. ^ Andrea Baillie (2008-09-04). "Bigger than Titanic?", Winnipeg Sun. Retrieved on 4 September 2008. 
  34. ^ Sharon Waxman (2007-01-09). "Computers Join Actors in Hybrids On Screen", The New York Times. Retrieved on 22 August 2007. 
  35. ^ Aili McConnon (2007-04-02). "James Cameron on the Cutting Edge", BusinessWeek. Retrieved on 28 August 2007. 
  36. ^ Pamela McClintock (2007-01-08). "Shyamalan's 'Avatar' also to bigscreen", Variety. Retrieved on 13 January 2007. 
  37. ^ Pamela McClintock, Tatina Siegel (2008-04-15). "Nickelodeon, Par team for 'Airbender'", Variety. Retrieved on 15 April 2008. 
  38. ^ Anne Thompson (2007-01-09). "Cameron sets live-action, CG epic for 2009", The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved on 13 January 2007. 
  39. ^ "Avatar Designs Based on Drilling Rig", ComingSoon.net (2008-01-12). Retrieved on 14 January 2008. 
  40. ^ Mikael Carlsson (2007-06-19). "Fox confirms Horner on Cameron's 'Avatar'", Film Music Weekly. Retrieved on 19 June 2007. 
  41. ^ Jim Dorey (2008-04-02). "Na'vi Alien Language Incorporated In 'Avatar' Music Soundtrack", MarketSaw Blog. Retrieved on 21 April 2008. 
  42. ^ Ann Lucas (Fall 2007). "Alumni News" (PDF), UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology. Retrieved on 24 July 2008. 
  43. ^ Dave McNary (2007-07-13). "Hollywood films' dating game", Variety. Retrieved on 17 July 2007. 
  44. ^ Pamela McClintock, Michael Fleming (2007-12-11). "Fox shifts 'Avatar,' 'Museum'", Variety. Retrieved on 12 December 2007. 
  45. ^ Ubisoft (2007-07-24). "Ubisoft and Fox Team for Avatar Game", Comingsoon.net. Retrieved on 25 July 2007. 

[edit] External links

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James Cameron
Films
Piranha II: The Spawning (1981) • The Terminator (1984) • Aliens (1986) • The Abyss (1989) • Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) • True Lies (1994) • Titanic (1997) • Avatar (2009)
Documentaries
Producer / writer
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) • Point Break (1991) • Strange Days (1995) • Dark Angel (2000-2002) • Solaris (2002) •Exodus Decoded (2006) • The Lost Tomb of Jesus (2007)
Associates
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