James Cameron’s (The Terminator) Avatar is the movie that revolutionized 3D features, and took the world by storm when it debuted last Christmas, and quickly became the highest grossing movie of all time. So now that the Special Edition of the film has opened in cinemas (at a fairly respectable 12th place; which isn’t bad for a re-release of a film that’s already owned on Blu-ray and DVD by most of the movie-going public, and first opened in cinemas less than a year ago), all Cameron’s recent interviews have tended to focus on what extra footage can be seen, and what he will be trying to achieve with the Avatar sequel.
Cameron has been slow to release any information about possible sequels to Avatar (save that he has a story-arc planned for the second and third films, and that it will most likely delve into the oceans of his fictional planet Pandora), and has been stating that he is hard at work on producing a novel based on the first movie (which he’s keen to point out isn’t a novelization of the film, but a standalone novel in its own right, and should be used as the world’s blueprint for any future filmmaker tackling his world); which he plans to complete before production begins on a sequel.
And even though James has listed other projects that he aims to complete (he’s currently hard at work producing a faithful 3D conversion of Titanic; his previous movie that also held the title of highest grossing movie ever, for 12 years; which should be due out in 2012), and has said that a full script for Avatar 2 is a long way off, many people assumed that it would be the first thing the director worked on; something he has now fully denied.
His next project will instead be a non-fictional documentary about the Xikrin-Kayapo tribe of Brazil; whom he spent a good deal of time with whilst doing research for the first Avatar movie; which will undoubtedly have an eco-friendly message, and be based around the the tribe fighting the construction of a dam on the nearby Xingu River; which they claim would displace around 16 thousand people (something the Brazilian government denies).
Cameron already produced a short film about the tribe (which will be included on the next Avatar Blu-ray/DVD release due out this Christmas), and now aims to “take a 3D camera to film how they live, their culture,” and document the struggle which he himself has said is “the same topic” as the plot of Avatar.
Whilst it’s not known exactly what form the final documentary will take, or what sort of release it will get (as documentary films don’t generally tend to fare that well on the theatrical circuit), filming is expected to begin either later this year, or in the beginning oo next year, and is a project that James Cameron feels very strongly about, stating that when he was asked to help “the Brazillian Indians, who were desperate” he “couldn’t turn away.”
