Cameron previews "Avatar" footage for first time

By Carl DiOrio

AMSTERDAM (Hollywood Reporter) - "The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!" James Cameron cried Tuesday as he strode onto a stage -- with his 3-D glasses on -- to unveil the first publicly shown clips from his $300 million 3-D sci-fi actioner "Avatar."

The fittingly epic film promo literally added an extra dimension to Fox's presentation at the Cinema Expo industry confab. "Avatar" actors Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana and Stephen Lang, and producer Jon Landau were also on hand for the preview.

"Three years ago, I stood up here and said the 3-D renaissance is coming," the "Titanic" director said. "And from what we've seen in the business, we can now say it has arrived."

In introducing the 24-minute assemblage, Cameron said much of it came from the first third of the film but that there were also glimpses from unfinished portions of later battle scenes involving warring sides clashing over control of the fantasy world Pandora.

The filmmaker also said the action gets nonstop in the latter portions of the film, which throughout is populated by strange life-forms in a world of unprecedentedly rich fantasy elements. Worthington ("Terminator Salvation") plays an avatar -- a remote-controlled character created by melding his crippled human form into a super-human being -- whose fate lies ultimately in doing battle with his own former race.

Fox made media covering the event agree not to report details of the "Avatar" images or to interview audience members for reactions. But from the sustained applause at the conclusion of the presentation, suffice to say Fox didn't hurt itself at the event.

A cinematic hybrid of CGI, motion-capture animation and live action, "Avatar" is Cameron's first dramatic feature since 1997's "Titanic." At that year's Cinema Expo, Cameron showed eight minutes of the effects-laden disaster drama before it rang up a still-record $1.84 billion worldwide boxoffice and copped Oscar's best pic statuette.

Cameron encouraged theater owners to add 3-D capability as quickly as possible. But acknowledging "Avatar" will have to play in a mix of conventional and extra-dimensional venues due to an insufficient number of 3-D auditoriums, he added, "I just want to say that I think 'Avatar' is going to play great in 3-D, 2-D, any 'D.' "

"Avatar" is set to open around the world on December 18, though it's become sport in Hollywood to speculate on whether the famously painstaking filmmaker will wrap the production in time. Cameron's high-profile promo appearance should go a long way toward soothing any anxieties.

"They wouldn't be doing this if it weren't coming out," a top distribution executive from a rival studio said.

Much of the technology used to capture actor performances was developed especially for "Avatar" and its effects crews at Peter Jackson's WETA Digital in New Zealand and at George Lucas' Industrial Light + Magic in Northern California.

(Editing by Dean Gooodman at Reuters)