THE TENTPOLE
Fox execs are sweating as Cameron again pushes the frontiers of f/x and motion picture technology with the CG/motion-capture/live-action 3-D "Avatar." The filmmaker worked on advance R&D for six years -- incredibly, studio execs say they plowed only $10 million into that, gambling that Cameron's new process would even work.
The director, working with VFX whiz Rob Legato, showed the studio advance pre-viz footage demonstrating how high-def video cameras could track actors moving inside a virtual CG set. Initially budgeted at $200 million, the sci-fi epic was pushed back from May to December 2009 to give the director more time to combine in the computer all necessary elements: 3-D motion-capture data of the actors on bare sets, CG environments, and final animation of the human avatars (Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver) and alien characters (Teresa Saldana, CCH Pounder). The photo-real digital film is 20% live-action with humans shot on location and 80% live-action mixed with CG elements. "It's a CG film with live-action in it," Legato says.
Sources close to the studio admit there was a time when it was terrified that Cameron's process wouldn't work. Execs relaxed a tad when they got to see finished footage. Giving Cameron and Weta Digital in New Zealand (where substantial rebates make everything cheaper) extra post-production time made sense.
The later release date leaves exhibitors time to add more 3-D screens. The movie could go out on a three-tiered basis: high-ticket super-charged Imax 3-D, regular 3-D and old-fashioned 2-D -- unless Cameron gets his way and refuses to show the movie on 2-D. That's a tough one, as there are about 1,000 North American screens and only a few hundred 3-D screens overseas.
More are scheduled to be built in the next year, but several senior execs at rival studios predict that Cameron will persuade Fox to push the movie back, because the prospect of releasing a $300 million movie on 1,500 screens worldwide is too nerve-wracking.
Fox is sharing the negative cost with several hedge funds to protect its downside. With 14 months to go, the final budget is hard to estimate, depending on whether Cameron does a lot of last-minute tweaking, and the film's running time, which should wind up at about 2½ hours.
ESTIMATED COST: $250 million to $300 million. Cameron knows how to play to the mainstream -- fanboys, soccer moms, trailer park dads, city folk and overseas auds. His goal is to change motion pictures as we know it. Fox could score another global commercial blockbuster.
