Collider.com claims: No AVATAR Trailer on TRANSFORMERS or ICE AGE
By Matt Goldberg | Excerpt:
collider.com
Matt Goldberg: "According to my contact at Fox, I have discovered that contrary to previous reports, the trailer for James Cameron’s “Avatar” will NOT be attached to “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. When I first heard that rumor, I was highly skeptical.
Why would Fox attach their big 3D movie to a non-3D, non-Fox film? Clearly, if they were going to attach it to a summer movie, it would be “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”. Confident in my own speculation, I reveled in my smug superiority.
I double-checked with my contact and asked if it would be in front of either film and she responded that the trailer isn’t finished yet and won’t be in front of either film. This led me to NEW speculation: the first look we’re going to get at “Avatar” is at Comic-Con."
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Searching for Avatar at Comic-Con
Will Cameron and crew reveal anything big?
All memberships have already been sold out for only the second time in the Con’s history.
Firstshowing.net reports: 'The 2009 San Diego Comic-Con kicks off on July 22nd. That means geeks everywhere are starting to get very excited and we've started planning our coverage.
While it's expected that Comic-Con won't officially announce all of their panels and presentations until sometime in July, we've heard some early details on who might show up. We've heard that Fox may be going all out with Avatar.
So if you're attending, this is where you'll be the first to see any footage from the movie (in 3D) and it's likely James Cameron will show up as well.'
And killerfilm.com reports: 'The hugely successful Comic Con has already slowly been leaking news as to who will be in attendance, and what we may expect to see.
Though no official word has come there may be a massive push for James Cameron’s Avatar as well as the man himself making an appearance (and hopefully showcasing the first footage from the film).'
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Charlie Gibson: 'Avatar will be a
technological breakthrough'
Excerpt:
denofgeek.com
Terminator Salvation Visual Effects
Supervisor weighs in on Avatar. . . .
Q: Speaking of reality, and the use of CG. As you said, in the last 10-15 years CG has become very refined and realistic, and, seamless. Where do you see VFX going from here? Is Avatar the next big thing?
A: Avatar is the next big thing! But I see three different directions for VFX. There's the super high def end, you know, certain directors like Jim Cameron and David Fincher and Gore Verbinski that are committed to the process, and are such artists and craftsmen, that they are involved from the very first sketches to the very last frame.
And they're there every day, looking at the work of the artists on the screen. That's what Avatar's going to be. Avatar will be a technological breakthrough, and it will be amazing, and will be the best 3D that anyone's ever seen.
But what it really is, ... is Jim Cameron's labour of love, and his obsessing over what amounts to every single frame of film for years! And that's what I'm paying to see - it's not any particular piece of technology. It's his attention!
Thanks to prncast for compiling this article
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Avatar Running Time is Over Two and a Half Hours
By Peter Sciretta | Excerpt:
slashfilm.com
SlashFilm's Russ Fischer was able to follow-up with Avatar producer John Landau, who made an appearance at the Ubisoft booth during the E3 video game convention. Fischer asked about Avatar’s running time, and Landau confirmed that it is “definitely over two and a half hours.”
The reason why I had my doubts is that the film is being released theatrically in 2D, Digital 3D and IMAX 3D, but the latter format does not allow for three-hour films.
I contacted IMAX, and they confirmed that the longest a non-digital 3D presentation could run is 160 minutes, and that is with two separate film reels, one for each eye.
I asked IMAX if they would be forced to cut down Avatar if the finished film ran 3 hours in length, and they said they’d get back to me — which of course, they never did.
When IMAX first began screening theatrical upconversions, the maxium running time was shorter, and I do recall one of the Harry Potter films being shortened a few minutes of the IMAX presentation. So it is possible that the same thing might have to be done for Avatar.
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Total Film Magazine on Avatar:
Biggest Movie of the 21st Century
Transcribed by AMZ | Source: TFM Issue 155
The man standing next to James Cameron predicts Avatar will be the biggest 3D liv-action movie ever made. He's not alone. Ridley Scott recently saw some footage. 'It's . . . Amazing,' he breathlessly told Total Film. Steven Soderbergh put it another way: 'The shit is mindblowing.'
More than a thousand people have worked on Avatar. The budget of $200 million is whispered to be a wildly conservative estimate. By the time audiences see it in December, fourteen years will have passed since Cameron wrote his initial treatment.
'We can't do this,' his crew told him back in 1995. 'We'll die.' Cameron made the biggest movie of time instead. But it now seems as if Titanic - like the underwater IMAX documentaries he's filmed since - was just another stepping stone to create the technology he needed to realize Avatar.
Lensed on an empty studio in the 16,000 square foot hanger where Howard Hughtes built his wooden 'Spruce Goose' airplane, Avatar takes place far in the future on the mythical planet of Pandora. It's a war movie that pits an army of callous human exploiters against ten foot blue indigenous aliens.
Pandora's exotic jungles and mysterious oceans are a fusion of CG environments and real locations shot in New Zealand and Hawaii. The cast are a combbo of actors (led by Terminator Salvation star Sam Worthington) and photorealistic digital 'synthespians.'
According to Cameron, Spielberg, Jackson, Scott, Soderbergh and everyone else who's seen a glimpse of Avatar, you won't even know which is which. And you won't care. That, explains Cameron, is the power of 3D. 'It's so close to a real experience that it actually triggers memory creation in a way that 2D viewing doesn't,' he buzzes. Believe it: cinema just won't be the same again.
Worthington Soon To Be Yakkity Sam for Avatar
Excerpt transcribed by AMZ
Total Film Magazine Issue 155
TFM: "Tell us all about Avatar. You play a soldier called Jake Sully . . ."
Sam: "All I can say is that Avatar is a James Cameron film. I think that's about all I can tell you at the moment, mate!"
TFM: "Are you sworn to secrecy, then?"
Sam: "It's out of respect for Jim. I'll wait 'til he gives me the go-ahead. Once he tells me I can start talking then you ain't gonna be able to shut me up!"
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Selling 'Avatar'
James Cameron's Avatar opens this December, yet the
marketing blitz hasn't even begun. Will the film succeed?
By Gary Gentile | Excerpt:
boxoffice.com
June 27, 2009 - Less than six months from now, one of the most highly-anticipated films in years will hit theaters - the 3D movie Avatar, from Aliens director James Cameron.
But you’d hardly know it from the complete lack of marketing in theaters, on television or in print.
Twentieth Century Fox and Cameron have been oddly silent in a world where hype is the main currency. The director recently showed 24 minutes of footage to a trade show crowd in Amsterdam, the first glimpse of the film Cameron announced he was working on as far back as 1996.
The film is slated to open December 18. But experts say the lack of advertising for the movie won’t hurt. In fact, it may even be part of the strategy to keep a lid on the movie as long as possible. “Does a film need to be pushed ad nauseum in the months in-between? I'd argue that it does not,” says Bryan Laurel, director of marketing for the Harkins Theater chain, based in Arizona. “There's a risk of turning people off if they have seen six versions of a trailer over the course of six months. They feel like they have already seen the film by the time opening day arrives.”
Many big-budget films start as early as a year in advance to build “buzz” among moviegoers—often before a single frame of the film has been shot. The teaser trailer for The Da Vinci Code was released in May 2005. The snippet showed a camera flying through what appeared to be deep stone crevices that, when the camera pulled back, were revealed to be tiny cracks in the Mona Lisa, the Leonardo Da Vinci masterpiece that plays a key role in the book and the movie. The film was released in May 2006 and was a smash hit, despite of, or perhaps because of, the early marketing push. But Avatar is no ordinary film.
It is being filmed using 3D cameras designed by Cameron himself, making it one of the first live-action films to be shot in 3D in years. Other technological innovations, including new forms of motion capture, are said to make the sci fi movie a stunning visual feast. With such emphasis on the visual experience, making a compelling TV spot or poster has its challenges. “It’s probably a tricky movie to sell,” says Jonathan Taplin, a professor at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California. “It’s tricky to make a trailer with the full 3D effect.”
That kind of challenge, or Cameron’s well-known perfectionism, could lie behind the lack of a trailer. One report said Cameron has already vetoed eight trailers as he tries to find the best way to get his story across to moviegoers as well as the message that this film’s special effects are second to none. Still, no one is worried that Cameron and Fox will have trouble drumming up business for the film. “It’s got a lot of following in the sci fi geekdom,” Taplin says. “It’s probably best to hold back as long as you can or else it becomes ho hum.”
Taplin suggests that six weeks before a film’s opening is plenty of time to create anticipation among audiences. That’s a view shared by at least one theater chain. “If marketing materials for Avatar make their way into theatres towards the end of the summer that's still four months of promotion for the film,” Laurel says. “If anything, Fox and James Cameron are creating that ‘must see’ factor that all studios and directors pray for every time they release a film. There's no need to panic. Something tells me Fox, Cameron and every exhibitor is going to be all right once December 18th rolls around.”
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THR on Cinema Expo 2009:
Avatar Extended Footage 'Expected'
By Carl DiOrio | Excerpt:
hollywoodreporter.com
June 22, 2009 - Program highlights set for Tuesday include a Fox slate presentation that's expected to feature extended clips from Jim Cameron's "Avatar," a 3-D scifi tentpole scheduled for release around the world in December.
Other Cinema Expo events reported by THR: Fox also will screen its 3-D summer three-quel "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," and Sony will show its Katherine Heigl/Gerard Butler starring "The Ugly Truth." Paramount followed a high-energy slate presentation here Monday with a pair of screenings of its upcoming summer tentpole "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" at a local Imax theater.
Updates June 23, 2009 (SPOILERS!)
Michael Stat of Marketsaw.com has reported that three full scenes were indeed shown at Cinema Expo. Unfortunately, no details are given or whether they will be shown to the public anytime soon. Michael is keeping track of the testimonials from the individuals who attended the special showing, click the Marketsaw link to see his updates.
Carl DiOrio of hollywoodreporter.com reports: (Excerpt) "The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!" James Cameron cried Tuesday as he strode onto a stage -- with his 3-D glasses on." The fittingly epic film promo literally added an extra dimension to Fox's presentation at the ongoing Cinema Expo. Fox film chairman Jim Gianopulos also greeted the clearly wowed exhibs at the RAI convention center auditorium. "Three years ago, I stood up here and said the 3-D renaissance is coming," Cameron said. "And from what we've seen in the business, we can now say it has arrived."
In introducing the 24-minute assemblage, Cameron said much of it came from the first third of the film but that there were also glimpses from unfinished portions of later battle scenes involving warring sides clashing over control of the fantasy world Pandora. The filmmaker also said the action gets nonstop in the latter portions of the film, which throughout is populated by strange life-forms in a world of unprecedentedly rich fantasy elements. Cameron encouraged theater owners to add 3-D capability as quickly as possible.
But acknowledging Avatar will have to play in a mix of conventional and extra-dimensional venues due to insufficient number of 3-D auditoriums, he added, "I just want to say that I think Avatar is going to play great in 3-D, 2-D, any D." Avatar is set to open around the world on Dec. 18, though it's become sport in Hollywood to speculate on whether the famously painstaking filmmaker will wrap the production in time. Cameron's high-profile promo appearance should go a long way toward soothing any anxieties. "They wouldn't be doing this if it weren't coming out," a top distribution exec from a rival studio said.
IESB.net reports: (Excerpt) First up was Weaver who explained how the Avatars work. Her character Dr. Grace Augustine is a scientist who dreams of living side by side with the 10-feet tall, blue skinned creatures the Na’Vi. To make it possible for humans to live on Pandora, she created these Na’Vi replica’s, Avatars.
Next up to tell the audience about Avatar is Stephen Lang. He plays Colonel Quaritch. He’s the only one who gets into character, when adressing the audience. He said that Dr. Augustine is ‘nothing more than a tree hugger’. The only way to deal with the Na’Vi is to kill them. “They maybe stronger physically, but we have more powerfull weapons,” he says. Leading man and by all means the new action hero, Sam Worthington, had a bad case of jetlag. Barely audible he tells the audience about his character, Jake Sully. A crippled ex-marine who travels to Pandora and comes into contact with Dr. Augustine.
She gives him a chance to walk again, as an Avatar. Zoe Saldana plays a Na’Vi called Neytiri. She says: “It took months to prepare for this role. I had to learn to fight like a Na'Vi. The audience got to see several finished scenes with Jake’s Avatar walking around on the beautiful Pandora and fighting all kinds of exotic creatures. In one of the scenes Jake and Neytiri walk in the jungle at night. Flowers, trees and the earth glow in the dark. The last scene is the battle between the humans and the Na’Vi. Because it's unfinished, it consisted of crude 3-D scenes, like out of a video game.
ComingSoon.net reports: (Excerpt) In the first scene we see Sam Worthington's crippled ex-marine Jake Sully, who just arrived on the planet Pandora. He's in a wheelchair and just rolled in to hear Colonel Quaritch, played by the impressive Stephen Lang, talk to the troops. He's giving a classic speech that every military leader gives at the beginning of a battle. Jake listens as an outsider to this speech. A melancholic smile appears on his face.
In the second scene Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine explains to Jake how the process of transporting your mind into an Avatar works. Although the scene is mostly exposition, we've got a good look at the lab and more importantly we get a first glimpse of the Avatars, the Na'Vi lookalikes. These tall blue creatures lie in water tanks, waiting for their human to 'jump' in their bodies. Besides Weaver and Worthington, the scene introduces Joel Moore's character Norm Spellman. As is usually the case with Moore, his character is the comic relief.
The third scene - Jake and Norm will inhabit their Avatar for the first time. They enter some sort of capsule and - flash – their mind enters the blue creatures, now lying on hospital tables. And not before long Avatar Jake wakes up. These creatures seem so real, that within minutes you forget you're watching an enormous and very blue CGI character. Even the eyes are totally convincing. The characters have real personalities and a soul.
In the fourth scene the Avatars of Jake, Norm and Grace explore the jungle of Pandora. The surroundings remind me of a planet that appears briefly in "Revenge of the Sith." A lot of massive colorful flowers and plants grow everywhere. Jake's unbridled enthusiasm works on Grace's nerves. And not before long they have their first confrontation with some creatures. Some sort of rhino with a flower sticking out of his head looks like he will kill Jake, but he's not scared and he let's out a scream. The 'rhino' runs away, but not because of Jake. A more dangerous creature – a wolf? – jumps at Jake from behind.
In the next couple of scenes Jake meets Na'Vi Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). Jake finds himself alone at night in the jungle with only a torch as protection against some evil looking dogs. Eager to fight them, Jake says: 'What are you waiting for?' When one of the 'dogs' attacks him he slams the torch in the creature's face. A fight ensues that Jake can't win by himself. Lucky for him, there's Neytiri who with her trusty bow and arrow helps Jake chase away the creatures. Just when Jake wants to offer his gratitude, Neytiri knocks his reached out hand away and says to Jake that killing these creatures is a bad thing. When the scene fades out to black, my mind begins to work overtime.
When Jake wants to take his torch with him, Neytiri takes it from him and throws it in the river. Like magic the flowers and plants – even the grassy soil - begin to glow in the night. Meanwhile we get to learn more about Neytiri and her people. Neytiri guides Jake through her world. Mysterious flowing and glowing seeds from a mystic tree appear out of nowhere. To Neytiri's surprise Jake attracts them. She has a look in her eyes like he's the 'chosen one.' And of course she's right. Jake has to lead the Na'Vi into battle against the massive army of Colonel Quaritch.
In the next scene we meet the Banshees. The Na'Vi ride these fierce looking creatures when they hunt. After some exposition, where Neytiri explains to Jake that a Banshee first has to respect you, before you can ride it, she takes flight and another gorgeous scene unspools. The last scene wasn't completed. What we saw, was sort of a video-game version of the mother of all battles. Countless numbers of Na'Vi riding their Banshees attack Quaritch's fleet.
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Writer Laeta Kalogridis in good company
with Scorsese, James Cameron
By Rachel Abramowitz | Excerpt: latimes.com
After years of paying dues, the Florida-born writer Laeta Kalogridis has become the go-to scribe for A-list epics and genre. It's not many screenwriters who can boast having films with Martin Scorsese and James Cameron in the same year, yet for the 43-year-old Kalogridis, who's been toiling in Hollywood ever since she sold her first script (an epic about Joan of Arc) while still at UCLA film school 16 years ago, 2009 has been a grand slam.
That's in part due to a willingness to gamble on her talent to create smart, epic fare. When the option for Dennis Lehane's gothic thriller "Shutter Island" expired at Columbia, producers Mike Medavoy and Brad Fischer of Phoenix Pictures picked it up for Kalogridis, with the explicit proviso that she work for almost nothing.
Kalogridis' relationship with Cameron has been more of a slow burn -- the two have been collaborating on Cameron's scripts for the last eight years, including this Christmas' "Avatar" and upcoming projects "Battle Angel" and "The Dive."
Enthuses Kalogridis, sounding like the neophyte she isn't: "The whole reason I came out to Hollywood was the influence of [Cameron's] work, his transformation of how we think of action, and how we think of female heroes in action."
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SciFiNow Magazine: Avatar to Break Records?
Transcribed by AMZ | Source: SFN Issue 27
James Cameron's 3D sci-fi adventure is set to tear up the record books. In a recent Time article, it was revealed that James Cameron's Avatar will cost in excess of 300 million dollars.
If this figure is accurate, the highly anticipated sci-fi movie due for release this December will be the most expensive film ever made. The potentially record breaking budget estimate was made known at the end of March in an interview with the Aliens helmer.
Since then however, the quote has been revised to read in excess of 200 million, claiming that the original figure was miss-stated. The big edit though, has left many suspecting that the alteration was brought about through studio intervention.
Twentieth Century Fox, the company distributing the film, would understandably be keen to protect such a huge investment from the sort of public backlash that 1995's Waterworld experienced. James Cameron, writer and director of Avatar, isn't unfamiliar with large production budgets having master-mind the success of the enormously expensive Titanic. The movie which went on to win 11 Academy awards cost 200 million dollars to make, but took nearly 10 times that at the worldwide box office. Given the different circumstances for Avatar however, such as the fact that it's a science fiction film, Cameron has a tough task to emulate his previous success.
Set in the distant future, Avatar tells the story of humanity's attempt to mine a planet; Pandora, with rich resources and the wounded ex-marine that must help the planet's inhabitants battle for survival. Reportedly, a great portion of the production expense has stemmed from requirements to develop new technology in order to properly realize Cameron's vision. When the idea was originally pitched in 1995, Cameron stated that his exclaimed, 'we can't do this, we'll die.' And since then, the race has been on to create the conditions and equipment for such a movie to be possible. One of the causes for such a sizeable budget is that the movie will pioneer e-motion capture.
A process that uses images from small cameras on actor's heads to help achieve more believable CG characters that have so far been seen. How successful it will be remains to be seen. But if the results can even partially reflect the investment and ambition of Cameron and his team, cinema go-ers can expect an all together fresh spectacle this winter. An additional cost to factor in is the digital 3D effects James Cameron will be boasting in Avatar. The new film has long been viewed as the most important live-action film with regards to the future of 3D entertainment and the director is making sure it lives up to the responsibility.
It could be argued that not only is Cameron's reputation is resting on the success of this particular technology, and in this particular film, so are the fates of many studios that have invested a large amount of time and money into the third dimension. In the lead up to the release of Monsters vs. Aliens, Dreamworks Animation's Jeffrey Katzberg has championed the development of the special effect, but has also made no secret of the cost. According to the producer behind Shrek, going 3D adds roughly 15 percent to the cost of production. This being the case, it's easy to assume that vast amount of Avatar's reported budget has been put towards the 3D technology involved.
The temporary revelation that Avatar's budget would exceed the 300 million mark is however not a totally unexpected one. Genre films have long been some of the most demanding in terms of expense, and the recent slew of super blockbusters has seen this trend accelerate. Of the top ten most expensive films ever made, adjusted for inflation and not including Avatar, only two aren't sci-fi or fantasy. Those being Cleopatra and the aforementioned Titanic, and only one of the remaining eight were released before the turn of the century. It is a remarkable statistic in telling both the current entertainment climate and of the increasing financial risk for movie studios.
Avatar however, is a rarity in that it is a film with a behemoth budget that doesn't belong to an existing franchise or story. If the originally reported expenditure is true, then it's going to take an all mighty effort from the marketing team (using, it must be said, mostly 2D technology) to turn this venture into a success. Star Trek aside, this is arguably the most enticing sci-fi film of the year.
It is, if nothing else, the next genre effort from the creators who brought us two terminators, Aliens, and The Abyss. But it is going to have to deliver more than just cutting edge effects if it is to win the plaudits and reviews that it will be so desperate for. Needless to say, the countdown has begun.
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