Give the man a break!

James Cameron has been working for what seems like eternity to bring his dream project, Avatar, to the screen. The film is already getting great reviews, and making year end “best of” lists. Obviously, everyone wants to know what’s next on Cameron’s plate. Above all, it seems that his primary concern is to continue to improve upon the technology he created. We already know that Peter Jackson and Steven Speilberg are using his virtual cameras for TinTin, and Cameron has been very generous with his technology inviting directors to watch it in action. Talking with various news outlets during press rounds, Cameron has been surprisingly open about what he wants to do next. While there are no projects moving into production immediately, as I’m sure Cameron would like to sleep before 2010, Cameron did discuss a few projects he’s developing.

First up, the question of Avatar sequels has come up time and time again. Cameron talked a little about his original pitch to the studio in which he laid it out as plainly as he could for them, concerning the budget: “We’re going to be spending a lot money and time developing the not only the process but the assets and all the models of every rock and tree and plant and creature and the muscle rigs for all the creatures and the facial rigging for the main characters…this is millions of dollars.  So it really makes sense to think of it as the potential start of a franchise or a saga that plays out over several acts with each movie being an act of that saga.” Cameron has the film mapped out as a trilogy, but there are no scripts written.

Next is Battle Angel Alita, based on the popular manga by Yukito Kishiro. The series follows Alita, an amnesiac cyborg, found in a garbage heap by a cybernetics doctor who rebuilds and takes care of her. She discovers one remaining memory of a legendary cyborg martial art,  which leads her to become a bounty hunter. The film was actually neck and neck in terms of which project Cameron wanted to do first. Whether it’s his next project is still unknown, but it seems to be a definite priority for Cameron. “We have a very good script and we’ve done a lot of production design. We’ve done about a year of production design and we’ve put together an art reel that shows the arc of the film. It’s pretty much just add water and we’re ready to go,” he laughed.

Discussing why Avatar came first, Cameron states: “The mixture of live-action and CG is a little trickier in 3-D than it is 2-D. It’s good to have done ‘Avatar’ first before ‘Battle Angel,’ because the tricky scenes are where you’re blending live-action photography, stereoscopic photography and CG. Shooting live stuff in 3-D and then adding CG characters and landscapes beyond that, that’s a little tricky. I think ‘Battle Angel’ will be very straightforward based on what we know right now [from 'Avatar'],” Cameron said.

Cameron’s most proud of the technological advancements on the creation of the Simulcam, “a real time tracking system that used the motion capture infrastructure on a live action stage, so that when I look through the eyepiece of my 3D camera, I see the set extensions as they will be,” he described. “We can even bring in CG characters in real-time, meaning actor-to-actor, meaning somebody’s acting a CG character over here and I’m seeing him in my eyepiece interacting with an actor in a live-action shot. That’ll be critical for whatever we do next.”

I swear, the man’s brain is constantly on overdrive. He’ll also be producing a new version of the cult-classic Fantastic Voyage, set to be directed by Roland Emmerich. There was a report that Cameron was set to write the update, which I seem to have lost the link for so we’ll just consider it speculation. A script was previously written by J. Michael Straczynski (Ninja Assassin, Babylon 5), but there’s no indication (yet) that his draft will be used.

Cameron seems adamant about not taking another decade long hiatus from Hollywood, so following the success or failure of Avatar I think things will become more concrete in terms of what his next project will be. All I know is I’ll be there. What do you want to see next from Cameron?

-Brian

Source: http://splashpage.mtv.com/tag/battle-angel-alita