Eric
Shoulder of Orion
Joined: 11 Jul 2005
Posts: 701
Location: Norway
|
 Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 7:36 am Post subject: Misc tidbits |
 |
|
James Cameron stresses BATTLE ANGEL ALITA is his next?
"Exciting news: it seems that "Battle Angel" is a definite go despite rumors that Cameron might delay it for the mysterious "Project 880." In an Aug. 9 article on The Independent website about Cameron's "Last Mysteries of the Titanic" documentary, he talks about Battle Angel, saying that the story will focus on Alita's relationship with a human man (probably Hugo from the manga).
"Finally, though, he thinks the time is right for him to return to feature films because he can now harness new technology to make something entirely fresh. Unsurprisingly, he has opted for an almost insanely ambitious sci-fi blockbuster. It is clear that the director of such ground-breaking films as The Terminator and Terminator 2, Aliens, The Abyss, and True Lies wants his comeback movie to make as big a splash as they did.
Inspired by Japanese graphic novels, he is currently developing Battle Angel, a cyborg thriller set in the 26th century. "It's going to be a mega-budget film shot in 3-D," Cameron enthuses. "It's set in a post-human world in the distant future, and a number of the main characters will be computer-generated. It's a kind of virtual film-making. We're building a whole new motion-capture technology. I'm impatient to get on with using the tools of the future."
He continues: "The main thrust is a love story between a human man and a female cyborg, and the film contains a range of characters from the fully human to the fully machine. I'm embracing the fact that human beings are amazingly adaptable. We've got a lot of flaws, but we're also pretty clever. We've got the tools, but can we use them?"
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=20955
- - -
James Cameron on His Next Four Projects: (November 3rd, 2005)
"With a Special Edition DVD of James Cameron's Titanic now in stores, the director talked to UK's The Times about his next four projects.
"I'm directing two movies back-to-back and I've got two more lined up after that," he says. "Two movies using the same techniques, the same 3-D digital-camera system, the same virtual production studio. They're big projects."
The newspaper says that the first will come out in the summer of 2007. The second in the summer of 2009. The first is likely to be Battle Angel, based on Yukito Kishiro's 12 popular Japanese graphic novels about a nymphette who morphs into an action heroine. The second film would be Project 880, while the third and fourth projects are unknown.
What is known, however, is that Cameron won't be making Terminator 4 or True Lies 2, says The Times about the rumors."
Thanks to http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14931-1847711,00.html
- - -
Cameron ready for 'Battle':
"James Cameron is moving forward on his next helming project, the sci-fi thriller "Battle Angel" for 20th Century Fox.
Fox declined comment and would not confirm that the project has been greenlighted, but Mali Finn Casting has placed an open casting call online for the lead actress in the new Cameron film.
The ad calls for female applicants age 16 to mid-20s who are athletic and agile with graceful movement and have an ear for languages and dialects. Submissions are due Dec. 19, the firm said.
"Battle Angel" is described as a big-budget adaptation of a 12-part Japanese manga series set in the 26th century that centers on 14-year-old female cyborg named Alita.
Fox's Emma Watts will shepherd the project for the studio, with production scheduled to begin in February.
Cameron has said publicly that he is planning to direct two movies back to back using a virtual-reality production process he refined and developed with visual effects cameraman and second unit director Rob Legato. The process is based on a photo-real version of the performance-capture technology used by Robert Zemeckis in "The Polar Express."
"Battle Angel" is the first project to employ the process and is set to come out in summer 2007. The second -- known in Cameron circles as "Project 880" -- is slated for 2009, the director has said.
Early last month, Fox executives visited a Los Angeles stage set up by Cameron's company, Lightstorm Entertainment, to view his proof-of-concept. They reviewed the director's latest digital-production process that includes 3-D high-definition digital-camera systems in a virtual production studio, allowing Cameron to make camera choices, edit, work with CG objects and direct actors on a stage within a virtual environment.
The frame-by-frame production setup allows Cameron to envision the entire film digitally before he shoots actors in live-action, performance-capture material.
Cameron demonstrated a real-world test of the technique on the stage to show the infinite digital production possibilities the system enables. The director had worked to debug and refine the system since early spring to get it to finished quality before demonstrating it to studio execs."
- - -
Cameron's Project 880 is... (January 17th, 2006)
"Since June of last year we've been wondering what James Cameron's PROJECT 880 is. It was supposed to compete with BATTLE ANGEL for Cameron's next film but since a casting call appeared online we assumed (not knowing anything about 880) it was for ALITA and that film would be next. But a scooper by the name of Mike writes in with an interesting theory and some pretty good research to back it up about Cameron's dualing films. Mike says it's not BATTLE ANGEL that's next, but the mysterious PROJECT 880 and that the latter is actually AVATAR, a film Cameron has been trying to get off the ground since the TITANIC days. First read this description of AVATAR lead character Zuleika from Cameron's treatment: "A NA'VI WOMAN. She is young, and lithe as a cat, with a long, slender neck, muscular shoulders, and nubile breasts... a statuesque vision. Let's not mince words here... she is devastatingly beautiful. For a girl with a tail. In human age she would be in her late teens." Now let's read the Mali Finn casting call, to "star in a James Cameron film that begins principal photography spring 2006," released last year: "FEMALE LEAD: 16-mid 20s. Any ethnicity, including Caucasian. She moves and behaves with confidence and a sense of nobility. Lithe as a cat. Athletic and agile. She is a warrior. Graceful movement and an ear for languages and dialects are essential." Some definitely similarities, right? And the "ear for languages and dialects" lends itself to the fact that the character is part of that Na'vi people who speak their own dialect. So if the casting call is to be believed and this film would start production this spring, will PROJECT 880/AVATAR go before BATTLE ANGEL? Our man Mike says the ANGEL script will continue to be revised while 880/AVATAR will film in spring at Fox Baja. I'd link you to Cameron's AVATAR treatment, which had been readily available all over the web for quite some time but recently all copies are no longer available... I'll try to get it posted in our Script Archives soon though. Stay tuned for more on this story..."
[Just a note on that: I'm glad Cameron, who previously has claimed he wouldn't direct AVATAR due to it being leaked online back in 2000, might now make it. The treatment is some of his best writing, and to quote The Screenwriters Utopia: "Possibly the most beautiful script I’ve ever read. So far Cameron has stuck to earth (well, he did travel off-planet in ALIENS) and we now get to see his vision of an exotic alien world. [...] Cameron describes three epic battles here. If he can truly present this world, as described, and do exactly as he writes, I think it would be the pinnacle of the action genre."]
Thanks to http://www.joblo.com/index.php?id=9991
- - -
A Question For James Cameron About AVA... Errrrrr, PROJECT 880:
"I hope he really is making the film, and that the reason he tracked down that 90-something page document and did his best to erase it is because he wants to cloak the film in mystery again. Even if people do still have copies of it, there’s no way that’s EXACTLY what you’ll be seeing, or even close to what he’ll eventually make. He’s a different person now, a different filmmaker, I’m sure, and he’s had a decade’s worth of real-life experience that he’ll bring to the table as a writer and as a director."
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=22373
- - -
James Cameron's Game Theory:
"Holed up at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., Cameron is working on the screenplay for Project 880, which he describes as "completely crazy, balls-out sci-fi." If it gets produced, it could be the first major Hollywood project that audiences will experience first as a multiplayer game on the Net, and only later on the silver screen."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_07/b3971073.htm
- - -
Project 880 in first position: (February 17th, 2006)
http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1160318_1_0_,00.html
"After nine years, three documentaries, one Entourage stint, and about 15,000 Celine Dion jokes, the shock isn't that James Cameron is back. It's that his first feature since Titanic won't be Battle Angel, the sci-fi-meets-anime project (based on Yukito Kishiro's Japanese graphic novels) that Cameron fans have been anticipating for years. ''We've moved Project 880 into first position,'' Cameron told Entertainment Weekly at the Santa Barbara film festival.
So just what is Project 880? Don't ask Cameron: ''It's as classified,'' he says, ''as the Manhattan Project.'' (That secrecy hasn't stopped some industry observers from guessing that 880 is actually a version of Avatar, the director's oft-rumored love story set against interplanetary war.) Whatever it is, Cameron is ready to shoot 880 at Twentieth Century Fox — where he's also preparing Battle Angel. Neither film has been completely cast, but 880 is now slated for '07 and Angel is set for '09. ''We couldn't do one unless we do both,'' says Cameron. ''They use the same technology.''
And that's where things get really cool. Cameron is no stranger to cutting-edge gadgetry — he's been on the forefront of the CGI revolution since Terminator 2. Now he's using realistic-looking motion-capture techniques like those that made The Lord of the Rings' Gollum so eerily lifelike, and shooting both new movies in brand-spanking-new high-definition 3-D. The catch? If the movies are to be distributed in 3-D format, he hopes to have at least 1,000 theaters converted to digital projection. (You'll view high-def 3-D through an updated version of the old glasses, but regular 2-D will be available.) Don't take these release dates to the bank, however. ''We don't want to get jammed up like on Titanic,'' he says, refusing to rule out the possibility that Project 880 could move to 2008. ''The consensus has been we will serve no wine before its time.''
- - -
Helmer takes scribe Kalogridis for a 'Dive': (February 27th, 2006)
"James Cameron has tapped Laeta Kalogridis, who is co-writing Battle Angel with him, to write The Dive, the true, tragic love story of freediver Francisco "Pipin" Ferraras and his wife Audrey Mestre.
Cameron plans to direct the film for 20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment. He will also produce with Lightstorm's Jon Landau and Rae Sanchini.
The Dive won't be the next directing effort for Cameron. Instead, he will next direct a film he's calling Project 880, which is speculated to be Avatar.
"Dive," which would begin after that project, will tell the story of two pre-eminent free-divers who, with but a breath of air in their lungs, plunged to unimaginable depths before swimming back to the surface. She died during an attempt to better her world record to 557.7 feet.
Cameron used his submersible equipment to film Ferraras when he matched the depth of her fatal dive in Cabo San Lucas, where the couple first met."
- - -
Harry talks to James Cameron, Cracks PROJECT 880, the BATTLE ANGEL trilogy & Cameron's live shoot on Mars:
"PROJECT 880 is AVATAR, or as he put it, “a retooled version of AVATAR” We talked about the scriptment that got out and he said while he was annoyed that it got out, he realized it was really no different than adapting a novel, and that certainly adapting that scriptment, which was incredibly dense as it was, had been a great challenge in and of itself.
Now he still doesn’t know if it is going to be BATTLE ANGEL ALITA or AVATAR that comes next. You see deep within the N.S.A. like security of LIGHTSTORM, Jim has been constructing a Virtual Production Studio completely unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. Within that space are two separate teams concurrently prepping and getting ready to shoot back to back essentially over a 3 year span, BATTLE ANGEL ALITA and AVATAR.
Because of the films’ mutual lack of a BIG STAR in the lead role, his start up on filming isn’t having to be locked down. So both projects can be prepped right up to the last minute before he calls it as to which is getting made.
Why the back and forth? It isn’t because he’s trying to drive us crazy, it’s because he is so in love with both projects that he can’t just emotionally choose one over the other. [...]
OK – so the 5 Cameron films he’s going to hit us with look to be AVATAR, BATTLE ANGEL ALITA 1, 2, 3 and DIVE… which will be a drama shot in and projected with the latest digital 3D technology."
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=22599
- - -
James Cameron's Comeback: Two Sci-Fi Trilogies:
"My summer vacation is over," a determined Cameron said this week, signaling an end to his nine-year absence from directing major motion pictures. "It's time to go back to work."
"The ballsiest play in history was the 'Lord of the Rings' films, where they shot all three films at the same time," Cameron enthused. "They were betting on success, just blindly: 'Are people going to go see these?' They didn't know. They bet the farm and they won."
"But I think the more logical way to do it is like ['Pirates']," he continued. "When you have a hit film, you want to make two sequels to it. You make them back-to-back, shoot them at the same time, and then do all the special effects; release one, then release the other."
With that in mind, Cameron is finally pulling back the curtain on two would-be trilogies that might define sci-fi filmmaking for the next decade and beyond. "I have two franchises, if you will, or films that play out over an arc of a number of films that I am going to be making," he revealed. "[I won't make them] back-to-back, but one after another. They, in turn, might spawn back-to-back sequels. It all depends on how the first one does."
The first of these films [...] "'Project 880,' we'll probably release it as 'Avatar,' he said, mentioning two such aliases. "We haven't locked in on the title yet, but this is what we are calling it. [There will be] possible sequels if it does well; if it tanks, no."
"We're going to do 'Avatar' first, and we're in active pre-production on it right now," he added.
"And with 'Battle Angel,' also, we'll do the same thing," Cameron said of his second project, a sci-fi thriller about a female cyborg in the 26th century. " 'Battle Angel' is actually designed as a three-film cycle. So the logic there is to make one and, if it hits, boom-boom on the other two."
"If you want to know more about 'Battle Angel,' you can get the graphic novels," the director said of his source material. "There's a series of 10 graphic novels, the original 10, by a Japanese artist named [Yukito] Kishiro."
The tech-minded Cameron added that although he watched with great interest as "Sin City" filmmaker Robert Rodriguez reinvented the graphic-novel movie with his green-screen breakthroughs, "Angel" won't be such a slave to the colored page. "It'll be a cinematic style; it won't be a moving graphic novel," he revealed. "I think what Robert did with 'Sin City' was a spectacular visual experiment; I think it worked brilliantly, but that's not what I'm going for. It's more of a cinematic, photo-real feel."
Both the "Avatar" and "Battle Angel" series, he added, will begin with self-contained debut movies along the lines of the original "Star Wars" trilogy. "The films have to play as individual films, but they have a greater story arc that goes over the three-film cycle," he insisted, saying he isn't a big fan of "The Matrix Reloaded"-like cliffhangers between chapters. "I think that's how it works the best. I don't think you want to just run people off the cliff after the second film."
Adding that "we haven't cast anyone yet" for either movie, Cameron said both projects are proceeding full-steam-ahead, and that his self-imposed sabbatical has yielded technological breakthroughs that will pay off soon on the big screen. "We did seven deep-ocean expeditions in the last five years. We developed a lot of new technology that we'll use on the movies, and I think it will make the movies better." The filmmaker added that he can't wait to climb back into the director's chair - whether it be twice or six times.
"It's fun, I enjoy it, and I've missed it."
Thanks to http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1535402/story.jhtml
- - -
Cameron Joins Fox on $200 Million Film: (January 8th, 2007)
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 8 — James Cameron, the director whose “Titanic” set a record for ticket sales around the world, will join 20th Century Fox in tackling a similarly ambitious and costly film, “Avatar,” which will test new technologies on a scale unseen before in Hollywood, the studio and the filmmaker said today.
The film, with a budget of close to $200 million, is an original science fiction story that will be shown in3D in conventional theaters. The story pits a human army against an alien army on a distant planet, using live actors and digital technology to make a large cast of virtual creatures who convey emotion as authentically as humans.
Earlier movies like the “The Lord of the Rings” did so on a limited basis, while those like “The Polar Express” have used live actors to drive animated images with so-called “motion capture” technology. But none has gone as far as “Avatar” will do to create an entirely photorealistic world, complete with virtual characters on that scale, Mr. Cameron said in a telephone interview.
“This film is a true hybrid — a full live-action shoot, with C.G. characters in C.G. and live environments,” he said, referring computer-generated images. “Ideally at the end of the of day the audience has no idea which they’re looking at.”
The making of “Titanic,” Mr. Cameron’s last full-blown Hollywood feature, was the stuff of movie legend. The film, released in 1997, went far over its planned cost to become the most expensive production that had then been made. But it went on to become a historic success, taking in a record-breaking $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office, and also winning 11 Oscars, including an award for best picture.
Mr. Cameron said that he had taken care to avoid the problems he encountered on his last gargantuan production, and that he was already four months into shooting the nonprincipal scenes by the time Fox gave final approval to the project today.
“I’ve looked long and hard at ‘Titanic’ and other effects-related things I’ve done where they’ve drifted budget-wise,” he said. “This has been designed from the ground up to avoid those pitfalls. Will we have other pitfalls? Yes, probably.”
For its aliens, “Avatar” will rely on characters that will be designed in the computer, but played by human actors, with tiny cameras on headsets recording their performances to be inserted into a virtual world.
Mr. Cameron has already devised revolutionary methods to shoot the film, which he has been quietly doing since the fall, and expects to create still more methods to bring to life the vision of a completely realistic alien world. He and computer experts have designed a camera that allows the director to observe the performance of the actors-as-aliens in the virtual environment in real time.
Sam Worthington, a young Australian actor, has been named to play the lead, as a paralyzed former marine who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself. The avatar is not paralyzed, but is an alien — 10 feet tall and blue. Zoe Saldana, another relative unknown, has been chosen as the love interest.
“We could do it with make-up, in a ‘Star Trek’ manner, we could put rubber on his face, but I wasn’t interested in doing it that way,” said Mr. Cameron. “With the new tools, we can create a humanoid character that is anything we imagine it to be — beautiful, elegant, graceful, powerful — evocative of us, but still with an emotional connection.”
The live-action shoot with actors will begin in April, with major effects being done by Weta, the filmmaker Peter Jackson’s New Zealand-based effects company, which worked on his “Lord of the Rings.” The film is scheduled for release in summer 2009.
“This will launch an entire new way of seeing and exhibiting movies,” said Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. “It’s once again Jim is transforming the medium. Jim’s not just a filmmaker; every one of his films have pushed the envelope, in its aesthetic and in technology. This is an astounding undertaking, and one only Jim could do justice to.”
Thanks to http://www.nytimes.com/
_________________
"Man fears the darkness, and so he scrapes away at the edges of it with fire." |
|
