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Biz you tryin to give us nightmares?  Shoot.

[MacGuffin]

Hoping 'Avatar' is the new face of filmmaking
James Cameron's futuristic thriller, opening next month, may be the most expensive movie ever. And Hollywood is in sore need of a game changer.
By John Horn and Claudia Eller; Los Angeles Times

Inside a dark mixing stage at 20th Century Fox a few weeks ago, writer-director James Cameron, surrounded by nearly a dozen colleagues, stared at a clip from his upcoming movie, "Avatar," unhappy with the look of the precipitous peaks on the horizon.

Circling the summits with a red laser pointer and speaking to his computer-effects team at Weta Digital in New Zealand via videoconference, Cameron came up with a Muhammad-like solution: Shift the mountains to the left.

"Moving a mountain," the 55-year-old filmmaker said, laughing, "is nothing."

Such bravado might be expected from the man who declared, "I'm the king of the world!" during the Academy Awards 11 years ago, when his last feature film, "Titanic," collected 11 Oscars. It was the highest-grossing movie in cinema history.

Throughout his career, in films such as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "The Abyss," Cameron has used eye-popping digital effects to create worlds and characters. But he never has attempted anything as creatively and commercially ambitious as "Avatar," a groundbreaking combination of 3-D filmmaking, photo-realistic computer animation and live-action drama that opens Dec. 18.

"Avatar," a futuristic thriller, may be Hollywood's most expensive movie ever, and many in the industry fervently hope it will transform 21st century moviemaking the way sound and color did decades ago.

The film business, struggling with flat theater attendance, collapsing DVD sales and the serial firing of top executives, certainly could use a game changer -- an immersive moviegoing experience that delivers more than anyone can get from their HDTV or home computer screens. But though "Avatar" might be all that, it also defies conventional Hollywood wisdom that today's blockbuster movies need to be "pre-sold" as bestsellers ("Harry Potter," "The Lord of the Rings"), comic books ("Batman," "X-Men"), toys ("Transformers," the upcoming "Battleship") or based on other movies (every sequel ever made).

Thus the novelty of "Avatar" could also be its biggest liability. And some wonder if the film's plot -- dense with action sequences and special effects, but also featuring a love story between two 10-foot-tall blue aliens -- will resonate with a wide enough audience to steer the movie into profitability.

Hollywood has tracked "Avatar" closely. Many of Cameron's friends -- members of a filmmaking elite that includes Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and Ridley Scott -- made pilgrimages to his Santa Monica production house and the Playa del Rey hangars where he worked on the film.

"I was blown away," said Guillermo del Toro, director of "Pan's Labyrinth" and the upcoming "Hobbit" movies. "The creation of this technology is what allows a movie like 'Avatar' to exist."

Said Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment: "He gets to the edge of the envelope, and then goes as far past it as possible."

To observe Cameron directing "Avatar" is to witness filmmaking as it's never been done before. Whereas most movies add all of their visual effects in post-production, Cameron was able to see fully composited shots in real time: The actors he was directing may have been performing in front of a blank green screen, but Cameron's camera eyepiece -- not to mention giant 3-D television monitors -- immediately displayed lush, synthetic backgrounds.

The filmmaker has spent the better part of a decade developing the technology used in "Avatar," which is set on a distant moon under siege by humans determined to pillage its natural resources. It required the reinvention of bulky 3-D cameras, which had to be downsized to fit into smaller spaces and move with fluidity, and lengthy experimentation with improvements in motion-capture animation, which superimposes animated characters onto real actors, as in the current Disney version of "A Christmas Carol."

As part of his research and development, Cameron directed the 3-D documentaries "Aliens of the Deep" and "Ghosts of the Abyss," which visited the Titanic's underwater wreckage. To overcome what many critics regard as the great flaw of motion-capture animation, the "dead-eye" appearance of characters, Cameron mounted tiny cameras above the faces of his "Avatar" actors, recording their smallest facial expressions and most intimate eye movements.

"What had been missing in motion capture was the 'E' -- the emotion," said "Avatar" producer Jon Landau.

The real test of this hybrid technology, the filmmakers acknowledge, will not be in the 3-D illusion of sending a rocket hurtling toward the audience, but in whether it enhances the tale's emotional resonance.

"Titanic" may have won the Oscar for visual effects, but it was the film's romance that lured millions of repeat viewers. One of Cameron's foremost challenges, then, is to ensure that the lead "Avatar" characters, played by Sam Worthington of "Terminator: Salvation" and Zoe Saldana of the most recent "Star Trek" movie, are as emotionally compelling as were Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

"I don't think there's any loss of emotionality or of the acting," Cameron said during a dinner break in his visual effects review. "I think we've reached the point where it looks as real as a blue humanoid character can look."

All the cutting-edge technology to get there -- along with Cameron's well-known perfectionism -- carries a cost.

With current production expenditures of $310 million (which could grow when the final budget is tallied) and a global marketing campaign that could cost as much as $150 million, "Avatar" won't have to do "Titanic" business to make money, but it will have to fill auditoriums around the world for weeks to become profitable.

"This has to be one of the highest-grossing pictures of the year to make it all worthwhile," said Doug Creutz, a media analyst with Cowen & Co.

Before Fox executives agreed to finance the film, Cameron in early 2006 showed them a four-minute "Avatar" test that convinced the studio he could pull it off.

"The revolution, the change that Jim has brought about is that for the first time the CGI-created characters have a reality and an emotionality that completely conveys the actors' performances," said Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. "That was the big leap -- that you would care about a CGI-created character."

That wasn't Cameron's only leap.

The director has broken Hollywood's most prominent budget milestones. "Terminator 2" was the first movie to cost $100 million; "Titanic," the first to hit $200 million. With "Avatar" he appears to be the first to crack $300 million.

"Avatar" joins the movie industry's expanding list of mega-budget undertakings; the most recent "Harry Potter," "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Spider-Man" movies each cost at least $250 million. But unlike those sequels, there's no "pre-awareness" hook, which studio executives increasingly rely on.

To mitigate its risk, Fox took on outside financial partners -- two investor groups from Dune Capital Management and one from Ingenious Film Partners -- which are paying for about two-thirds of the production costs, according to people familiar with the deals. Fox will also get a 15% tax rebate from New Zealand, where all the live-action sequences and most of the effects were done, expected to be between $25 million and $30 million.

Cameron agreed to delay his profit participation until Fox and its investors recoup their costs. Fox will first pocket a double-digit distribution fee for releasing the movie and recover all of its marketing expenses. "Avatar" also will benefit from the higher ticket prices charged by 3-D theaters.

In interviews at Fox's Century City studio, Rothman and Gianopulos, who run the most cost-obsessed operation in Hollywood, said they are comfortable with the movie's economics.

"It's a creatively ambitious movie that is fiscally prudent," said Rothman. "And when you can move the popular culture, particularly with something newly created, historically speaking, that's a path to tremendous success."

"When we take on a movie of this scale," added Gianopulos, "we do it with a great deal of confidence. It would have killed me not to make it."

Fox is mounting an unusual and extensive promotional campaign, including 3-D glasses made from recycled Coke Zero bottles and a 3-D video game from Unisoft. The studio began screening "Avatar" clips last summer, first to European exhibitors at a festival in Amsterdam, then at San Diego's Comic-Con.

In August, the studio declared "Avatar Day," showing 16 minutes of the movie for free at 130 IMAX theaters around the globe, seen by 50,000 to 60,000 people, according to Fox estimates. Initial fanboy reaction wasn't all positive. "If Cameron thinks a film that looks like an Xbox game is the future of cinema . . . then he's mental," said one Web critic.

"I thought anyone who saw the early footage would be a convert," Cameron said of the IMAX previews. "It just seemed that everyone who had seen the footage wanted more."

In one promising sign, at least, early ticket sales to some large-format IMAX screens, particularly in London, have been running at a record pace.

Moreover, Fox can take comfort in the fact that the release of Cameron's "Titanic" was preceded by a yearlong wave of negative press and skepticism. Then it earned $1.8 billion at the box office.

Rothman was at Fox when Cameron made "Titanic," and hanging on his office wall is a present from the director: a child's life preserver with the inscription, "From a fellow survivor."

[socketlevel]

hype hype hype that machine. hype it!

i really hope cinema isn't dead.

[MacGuffin]

James Cameron explains why Avatar aliens have tails
Source: SciFi Wire

James Cameron appeared on 60 Minutes last night, where he gave Morley Safer—and us—a behind-the-scenes look at how he went from being the director of "the very best flying piranha movie ever made" to the creator of the $400 million 3-D fantasy Avatar.

"This is the film I think I always wanted to make when I set down the path of being a filmmaker," said Cameron.

He also revealed the reason he gave his blue aliens tails—because: "Tails are cool!"

Well, there's actually more to it than that. To learn the rest of the story, check out the video below.


http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5737218n&tag=api

or

Part 1:



Part 2:

[MacGuffin]

Avatar's Cameron shrugs off buzz—and promises a sequel
Source: SciFi Wire

You've heard some of the buzz surrounding filmmaker James Cameron's upcoming 3-D sci-fi epic movie Avatar? Well, Cameron has a message for the haters: You ain't seen nothing yet.

Coming up for air after "four and a half years of intense work," Cameron insists in an exclusive interview that he "consciously made a decision not to read any article or news breaks about Oscar buzz" while he labored to finish the film and also admits that he's been "well aware" of some of the negative fan buzz surrounding the project, based on screenings of early footage and trailers.

"I know there's been a lot of talk and speculation about it, but it's kind of like the generic Oscar buzz out there—it's pretty ridiculous when people haven't even see the movie," he says, addressing the issue. "All anyone has seen is the 25 minutes of various scenes we showed at Comic-Con—and that's not the movie! How can fans judge it by that?"

The director is quick to defend Avatar, which is set on the planet Pandora and features the Na'vi—tall, blue-skinned aliens—as well as human-engineered "avatars" and plenty of high-tech futuristic toys.

"I set out to make a film that's like the stuff that played on the projection screen of my mind when I was a teenager, informed by science fiction," Cameron says. "And I wanted to do original stuff, all those creatures and landscapes and plants and animals that I'd been drawing and noodling out over some 20 years. And fans really love this kind of depth and detail, so when I began Avatar I really put a lot of energy and focus into a sense of completeness in detail of the world, for that very reason."

If fans are "disappointed" with the film's blue alien race, Cameron stresses that "I wasn't going for the alien. I wasn't going for the ugly and strange. I was going for something that's an expression of beautiful human movement in the film. They symbolize the best of us in the way the film works subconsciously, which I feel is aspirational. What they really are is a heightened sense of ourselves and what we could and should be."

Not all the buzz has been negative: The only public screening of the film so far, to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in Los Angeles this week, generated enough enthusiasm that the movie's now being buzzed as a Golden Globe nominee, HitFix reports.

And if you really like it, Cameron promises more from the universe of Avatar. It "is not true science fiction in the sense of saying, 'This is what contact with an alien species would be like.' It's not about that at all. It's about how we've lost contact with ourselves in a natural state. So if we fail, it all ends there, but if we are successful then we'll make more films, and that world will continue to flesh itself out and be a place that fans can go to."

Cameron insists that the mix of sky-high expectations and negative fan buzz isn't freaking him out. "No, it's good, as we had to sell a movie that wasn't a sequel or remake or part of a franchise or based on a best-seller," he says. "It had no brand awareness, and I was more worried about people not even knowing about the film than them kind of arguing about it or having high expectations or having those dashed."

As you might expect, the director who once called himself "the king of the world" says he's "very confident" that once "even hard-core sci-fi fans see the whole movie, they'll get it, because the film will speak for itself. If I can just get 'em in the damn theater, the film will act on them in the way it's supposed to, in terms of taking them on an amazing journey and giving them this rich emotional experience. And it's not really like any other film, and I think that's its greatest asset—and its greatest deficit. You can't compare it to something else."

Avatar opens Dec. 18. Look for more Avatar coverage soon from the press day in London.

[polkablues]

Ha!

There will not be a sequel. It's mathematically impossible for this movie to be profitable enough to warrant a sequel.

[Gamblour.]

Ha!

There will not be a sequel. It's mathematically impossible for this movie to be profitable enough to warrant a sequel.

Yeah, this movie is going to lose so much money. I have no urge to see it once, really. I will, but only because Cameron won't shut the fuck up about it. Either he is really right or really wrong.

[modage]

I will see it.  But not opening weekend.  I want opening weekend to sting.

[Pas]

I think it's gonna have a 70M+ weekend ... probably gonna finish with 150M maybe?

A sequel will cost a lot less to produce now that the ''new technology'' is in place... so it could actually help them make their money back.

Still think it looks like shit, the story and the graphics.

[The Perineum Falcon]

A sequel will cost a lot less to produce now that the ''new technology'' is in place... so it could actually help them make their money back.

You really think Cameron's gonna take the easy way out? If this makes enough to get a sequel, he'll invent some other nonsense, like holograms or some shit.

And I'll probably end up seeing that too...

[Pas]

haha maybe you're right! or maybe he won't direct the sequel or something...

[Derek]

I'll trust Cameron on this one. IMHO, he hasn't made a bad movie. In fact, I'd call all of them great (I'm not counting Pirhana II). I'm kind of getting an Aliens vibe from this one....hope it does well...I think it'll easily pull in $300M domestically.

[polkablues]

I actually do believe it will not be a flop in the strictest sense, and may even end up being (or at least appearing) profitable.  I do not believe there will be any significant contingent of the audience that will be clamoring for a sequel, and I don't believe the studio will be inclined to go to the trouble of producing one simply because James Cameron's ego demands it.

Honestly, Pas and Derek's box office predictions are probably both conservative.  Cameron's problem, though, is that for them to even be able to make the claim that the movie turned a profit, they'll have to hit at least $400 or 500 million.  For them to ACTUALLY make a profit off the movie, they would likely have to double that, at least.  And that's simply not going to happen.

[Pas]

you mean because of marketing etc the movie's bill will border 1 billion? seems high, no? why would they do it in the first place?

[picolas]

i think it will flop in the strictest sense.