Avatar has been in the mind of arguably the greatest Hollywood visual artist of the entertainment industry for a decade and a half as James Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment for Avatar using every science-fiction book he had read throughout his childhood, as well as novels from the greats -- Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, as motivation and inspiration for the biggest-budget Hollywood movie to make it to the silver screen.
In 1996, after completing Titanic (which would become the highest-grossing movie of all-time with a record-breaking $1,843,201,268) -- Cameron claimed that he would produce and complete Avatar and would use computer-generated actors for the movie due to its science-fiction nature but had used CG actors in such a distinctive way that it seems like only James Cameron would be able to craft and use this filmmaking trickery to his own advantages.
The project would cost $100 million dollars and involve at least a minimum of six actors who would be 'non-existent in the physical world' with production beginning in the summer of 1997 to lead to a 1999 release but had felt that the technology was not advanced enough to be able to utilize for the movie and had decided to use patience as his virtue until January 2006 where he officially began production for the groundbreaking...Avatar.
The director had planned to make use of photorealistic CG characters and crafting new motion-cap technologies never before seen in the film industry to ensure that his movie would be able to recreate every inch of detail from the greatest screaming facial expression possible to the most miniscule skin wrinkle you would be able to discover on a Na'vi humanoid.Marketing
Promotions
The first photograph of the movie was released on August 14th, 2009, along with Empire-exclusive images of Avatar in its October issues leading to more interest from audiences and film critics alike due to the fact that more people wanted to know about this James Cameron project that he has invested 15 years of his Hollywood career in.
To further the marketing promotion for Avatar, James Cameron announced that on August 21 at the Comic-Con Avatar Panel that it would be 'Avatar Day' and this led to the official video game trailer, toy line of the film and an 129-second trailer (being 2:09 worth of Avatar anticipation footage) only to lead to another trailer, being a 210-second trailer (which would be 3:30 worth of footage) that would be premiered in cinemas and online on Yahoo! to much positivity from the audiences who have been keeping up with the anticipation of Cameron's next big movie magnificence.
An extended IMAX 3D version would be released to critical acclaim which was seen as a definitive step in the right direction for Cameron and the crew as they had received little-to-no criticism for their movie, whether negative or constructive, whatsoever at the time.
In order for James Cameron to be able to connect with the audience more, which is certainly an increasingly challenging task for a computer-generated movie to do in comparison to a live-action movie featuring real-life characters, McDonald's had promoted a tagline which would read 'Avatarize yourself' which would lead to people taking a photograph and transforming themselves into the Na'vi species. Clever move indeed, Jamie boy.
Books
If you thought that only the production of the Avatar movie was going to be a lengthy piece of work itself, you certainly haven't seen the amount of content within the books that had been used to promote this bad boy as Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora consisted of 224 pages worth of guidance information based on the fictional setting of Pandora itself (therefore, bringing the setting to life -- a task which Cameron and the crew executed well rather than having Pandora just be a 'fictional sci-fi setting for a bunch of aliens').
Knowing that computer-generated movies had been brought to the movie screens specifically for children, James Cameron wanted to reach out to an immense audience with his immense working project and this led to the release of James Cameron's Avatar: The Reusable Scrapbook. You know, because the movie's so great, you'd watch it again...and again...and again.
Other book releases were The Making of Avatar, being a 272-page illustration containing over 500 color photographs and illustrations (yes, even when it comes to books, James Cameron's gotta make sure it's as big as big can become which is why he even planned to write an epic novel that fills in all of the gaps possible.)
Distribution
The film distribution of the 237+ million-dollar movie had finally premiered on December 10th, 2009, 15 days shy of Christmas and was originally scheduled for a May 22, 2009 (two days shy of my birthday) release during production time but was pushed back to allow post-production time as well as all of the theatres time to be able to use the 3-D projectors for the worldwide premiere of Avatar and in total -- 90% of all ticket sales, in advance, were for Avatar's 3-D screenings.
Internationally, Avatar opened on a total of 14,604 screens in 106 terrorities, of which 3,671 were showing the film in 3-D (producing 56% of the 1st-weekend gross.) The IMAX release that had premiered worldwide was the company's widest to date, opening up in a total of 261 theatres worldwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment