Videogame conference E3 is currently happening and while it’s not really our world or of much interest, James Cameron is there talking about the “Avatar” video game made by Ubisoft. Ok, to be honest that’s not of much interest either and we’re obviously not as jazzed about the “Avatar” project as some fanatics are (MarketSaw have a huuge boner for this film and pushing the 3D agenda). However, we are interested and we’re definitely willing to give it a shot. While the story does sound like a high-concept version of “Aliens” — soldiers on a foreign planet who run into foreign wildlife, only this time people can live within host bodies — everything we’ve read is intriguing.
So wait, sequel already? In this long and mostly boring E3 interview clip with Cameron, the director goes on and on (zzzzz) about how Ubisoft and he worked synchronously to make a video game that fit perfectly into the “Avatar” world and even acting as an extension of the milieu. Congratulations (the cheesy ambient Yanni music in the background also makes you want to kill yourself), more interesting is at the 3:36 mark when he says, “The final culmination of all this [collaboration] will be when I sit down to write the sequel, I want to talk to [Ubisoft] first because they have a lot of great ideas and designer and it may actually be possible, [presuming a sequel is greenlit], we’ll co-generate a lot of ideas.”
Cameron seems to have his own hard-on for the folks at Ubisoft and in a second interview says, “They came up with all these ideas that I never really thought of and I thought, ‘if I can’t work them into this film… I could certainly work them into a sequel.’ Cameron of course always humbly notes, “if” there is a sequel, claiming it depends on how the movie does and many of the cast members including Sam Worthington are already signed on for two potential sequels (“We haven’t locked in on the title yet, but this [‘Avatar’] what we are calling it. [There will be] possible sequels if it does well; if it tanks, no,” he told MTV in 2006) but c’mon, this thing is going to do mega-gangbusters at the box-office, no?
Thanks to reader/blogger Alex Litel, who makes us LOL, by lamenting the fact that despite all of Cameron’s advanced technology, it’s a “shame that he can’t computer-generate non-atrocious hair.”
