Studios wary of big budget auteurs

Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
The figure that haunts every studio chief’s dreams is a high-profile auteur whose artistic vision outweighs his financial constraints.

Sometimes the gamble on a marriage of artist and epic pays off. James Cameron’s “Titanic” went way over budget and behind schedule, but resulted in $1.85 billion at the worldwide box office, the highest-grossing blockbuster of all time.

On the other hand, execs can’t forget “Cleopatra” and “Heaven’s Gate.”

Blood pressure has risen for execs at Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros. over, respectively, “Avatar,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Where the Wild Things Are.” The studios say that the cumulative budget of the three is $500 million. Others say the pricetags total closer to $800 million.

Each film represents a different set of risks — technological, artistic and, of course, fiscal. Each film started big and got bigger.

While the studios will continue to push for new eye-popping ways to lure audiences into massive event-movies, the days of lavish spending on high-end dramas is under scrutiny by conglom parents.

One note of caution: The major studios, notoriously secretive by nature, are especially protective when it comes to their high-budget entries. Many studio execs associated with these films were reluctant to give details, so the information was augmented by talk with the craftsmen themselves and their supporting casts.

- from Variety

James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ creating tech buzz

With 17 months to go before the release of James Cameron’s sci-fi epic “Avatar,” his first narrative feature since 1997’s “Titanic,” anticipation already is enormous. The wildly ambitious project will be made in stereoscopic 3-D and combine live action and computer animation using visionary new filmmaking techniques.

Slated to open Dec. 18, 2009, the production already has been in the works for 2 1/2 years. When completed, Cameron expects “Avatar” to be about 60% CG animation, based on characters created using a newly developed performance capture-based process, and 40% live action, with a lot of VFX in the imagery.

“It is the most challenging film I’ve ever made,” Cameron said.

- from THR

James Cameron toplines 3DX panel

From Variety:

Twentieth Century Fox filmed entertainment chair Jim Gianopulos, DreamWorks Animation topper Jeffrey Katzenberg and director James Cameron will give a joint keynote at the kickoff event for 3DX, the 3-D film and technology festival slated for November in Singapore.

Plans for the joint presentation are still uncertain, but Gianopulos and Katzenberg are expected to begin the keynote, then bring Cameron in to join them.

The joint appearance is skedded for the 3DX business forum on Nov. 19.

Fox and DreamWorks have major bets on digital 3-D. Katzenberg has announced that all DreamWorks Animation releases going forward will be in 3-D, beginning with “Monsters vs. Aliens” in 2009.

Sigourney Weaver talks Cameron’s Avatar

When it comes to bad-ass babes in cinema history, well, there’s Ellen Ripley, the take no prisoners heroin at the center of “Alien” and its three sequels, and then there’s everybody else.

But if anyone could match her, it would have to be the tag-team of James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver, back together again on the 3-D extravaganza “Avatar,” right? Could Dr. Grace Augustine be a Ripley for the 21st century?

At least one person doesn’t think so. Too bad that one person is Weaver herself.

“There’s not too much Ripley [in her]. The only thing they have in common is they devoted their lives to this other thing,” the veteran actress recently told MTV News. “I think [Grace] probably would have liked a normal life but she had to make a choice and she chose science.”

Ok, yeah, but it’s a Cameron film. That means even eggheads get into a little action – and Doc Augustine is no exception, Weaver confessed, revealing that she’s front and center for a lot of butt-kicking.

“She has an avatar. She’s very involved,” Weaver teased. “[In fact,] I would say her real life is as an avatar.”

Via MTV

James Cameron dreams in 3-D

I believe that Godard got it exactly backwards. Cinema is not truth 24 times a second, it is lies 24 times a second. Actors are pretending to be people they’re not, in situations and settings which are completely illusory. Day for night, dry for wet, Vancouver for New York, potato shavings for snow. The building is a thin-walled set, the sunlight is a xenon, and the traffic noise is supplied by the sound designers. It’s all illusion, but the prize goes to those who make the fantasy the most real, the most visceral, the most involving. This sensation of truthfulness is vastly enhanced by the stereoscopic illusion. Especially in the types of films which have been my specialty to date, the fantasy experience is served best by a sense of detail and textural reality supporting the narrative moment by moment. The characters, the dialogue, the production design, photography and visual effects must all strive to give the illusion that what you’re seeing is really happening, no matter how improbable the situation might be if you stopped to think about it — a time-traveling cyborg out to change history by killing a waitress, for example. When you see a scene in 3-D, that sense of reality is supercharged. The visual cortex is being cued, at a subliminal but pervasive level, that what is being seen is real. All the films I’ve done previously could absolutely have benefited from 3-D. So creatively, I see 3-D as a natural extension of my cinematic craft.

Via Variety