After so much anticipation, the epoch of director James Cameron’s CGI-epic Avatar has begun with an opening midnight gross of $3.5 million.

However, despite notching $73 million at the box-office during its opening weekend at 7,000 screens in 3,452 sites, it only copped the second highest December opening of all time behind I am Legend’s $77 million in 2007.

Because Avatar has been cited by industry experts as a game-changer for Hollywood, some people have expressed worries about Cameron’s opus not meeting uber-high expectations (even with the winter storms keeping people inside). continue reading…

There’s so much buzz surrounding filmmaker James Cameron’s opus Avatar that it’s hard to believe what’s real and what’s not. However, what is very real about Avatar is that it’s becoming the first convergence point between a movie and a video game.

Based on a 1994 script treatment written by Cameron, the science-fiction film Avatar is being acclaimed as a filmmaking breakthrough in terms of technology even before its upcoming release this December. The story, about a human-alien war on a far-off planet named Pandora over its resources, will feature the merging of both human and alien perspectives in the movie.

It’s no surprise that with the technological advances Cameron has used to create the film, Avatar is also being released as a video game with the help of game developers Ubisoft. This is Ubisoft’s key corporate strategy behind Avatar: the convergence of movies and video games.  continue reading…

In this age of big-budget movies, can a movie worth $500 million earn it back given the global financial recession? Well, only if it has the name ‘James Cameron’ attached to it.

The 3D science-fiction film Avatar is turning into one of the most expensive movies ever to be produced for Cameron and 20th Century Fox. But a lot of movie people believe it can turn a profit because Cameron’s previous phenomenal hit, Titanic, had earlier grossed more than $1.8 billion worldwide in 1997.

And just to make sure, Fox (and to some extent its parent company, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation) and Cameron are hedging their bets on the movie. continue reading…