New Information about the DVD Releases in April and November

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LOS ANGELES — Avatar, the biggest box-office success in movie history, is poised to become the biggest home entertainment hit ever released.

But James Cameron and his minions, as well as eager executives at 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, will have to wait until November before the full impact is felt. That is because, on Earth Day April 22, Cameron is offering “a pure movie version” of Avatar. That applies to both the standard DVD and the Blu-ray, with the Blu-ray arriving in a combo pack that is driving a significant percentage of pre-sales, which in turn could tip the entire market to high-definition.

For these releases, there are no extended sequences, no deleted scenes, no director’s diary, no extras of any kind. Not even the usual annoying trailers that clutter up most releases and often bog viewers down when menus are disabled until you plough through the junk.

Except for persuading Fox to eliminate trailers, this is a gutsy move fraught with controversy. Some fans may prefer to wait and see. But Cameron has a plan. He is promoting the April 22 release both for its own sake — making Avatar as technically perfect as possible for home viewing — and to link the movie’s eco-activist themes with real-life environmentalism. Avatar is part of a worldwide tree-planting project launched by the Earth Day Network. Cameron is both an environmentalist and a practical man who values quality film technology.

“The Blu-ray especially should be equal to the theatrical experience in the sense that it’s 100% of the resolution that you get in the theatre,” Cameron says about the painstaking way Avatar has been handled. “So all the detail is there.”

Then, in November, Cameron and Fox will release uber-sized special editions featuring an extended cut of the movie. These DVD and Blu-ray releases will contain extensive extras, including a filmmaker’s journey and deleted scenes that don’t fit into his concept for the longer version of Avatar.

“So, you’re right, it is fluid,” Cameron says in a group interview after I ask about the elusive nature of modern movies, which can change from theatre to home through director’s cuts or the optional branching technique he will use in the November releases. “It is organic — and I think that is kind of fun. But that is why it seems critical to me to put out the movie that was in theatres. Exactly as it was with no changes. With no trailers! Nothing at the front; nothing at the end; just, ‘Here’s the movie!’ ”

For Cameron, these Earth Day releases are a filmmaker’s declaration: “We drive the stake in the ground and say: That’s the movie!”

Once that is done, everything can change — and a lot will change, Cameron says. His attitude is: “Now let’s experiment! Let’s screw around. Let’s look at different ways to watch the movie based on what your appetites are. So that’s my approach to it. Different directors have different perspectives on these things and that’s fun, too. But you’re right, it’s an evolving document. It’s like an abridged version of a book that comes out later. A guy gets an idea and writes another chapter. What the hell!”

The exact running time of the extended version, and what scenes it will contain, is far from certain, Cameron says. One addition will be sex scenes involving the tangling of Na’vi braids. They were cut because “they freaked people out” in the original version. Selected scenes, including that one, are now in the hands of the WETA special effects workshop in New Zealand for completion. But the process has only just begun, Cameron says. “I also don’t want to make too many declarative statements right now because, frankly, I’m just getting into it.” That also applies to bonus materials to be included in the November releases. “A lot of the decisions about the supplements are going to be made over the next few months.”

Back to the April 22nd releases. According to producing partner Jon Landau, Cameron personally supervised every frame of the transfer to DVD and Blu-ray, a complicated process that is only noticeable to viewers when the filmmakers botch the job of correcting colour and adjusting sound for DVD and Blu-ray masters.

“This is not something that has been created without Jim’s touch on it,” Landau says, understating Cameron’s famous (sometimes infamous) perfectionism. “Jim’s spent a lot of time working on the colour and the technical aspects to get it out there.”

The pure movie approach came from this drive, Cameron says. “Part of it is that all this extraneous material takes down our bit rate. When you’re a long picture like Avatar, it barely fits on the disc (specifically on DVD). If you have to make room for a lot of other content, it starts to degrade the image quality. That’s part of it.

“Also,” Cameron adds with a mischievous grin, “I have this kind of unwritten deal with Fox that, any time one of my movies makes more than a billion dollars, we leave all the crap trailers off of it, just as a little service to the viewer. Because I can’t stand watching them any more than you can.”

Avatar has now grossed a record $2.7 billion worldwide, a record $743.7 million of that in the U.S. and Canada. Avatar broke Cameron’s own records, which were set by Titanic (1997). The weird thing is how he almost made Battle Angel, a futuristic story about a female cyborg, instead of Avatar. Both projects, long in gestation, had been on equal footing in the planning stages. “They were in a dead heat for a while,” Cameron says. “It was almost a coin toss.”

But he and Landau had to shoot test footage of the motion capture techniques they were planning for both. Only Avatar offered a simple scene involving two CG characters with dialogue, a prototype of the scene of when Sam Worthington first meets Zoe Saldana. The Battle Angel scenes all involved CG action sequences. So Avatar became the test case. “It was a purely practical matter. Then, when we did the test, we just got all into Avatar and then it went to weeks later and we’re doing Avatar. We never looked back at Battle Angel.

“But it wasn’t some master plan. You could expect it to be a master plan, like we’re a little more in control of things than that.” But that was not the case, Cameron says. An accident of planning became part of cinema history — and it is still making history.

Cameron pondering next move

James Cameron has no idea yet what his next feature film will be. One choice is a sequel to Avatar. Another is Battle Angel, the futuristic sci-fi adventure he put on hold to make Avatar.

“Battle Angel was parked the whole time,” Cameron says of the five years he spent making Avatar. “It is still parked now. So I’ve got to decide. Do I want to go back and do Battle Angel now, and come back to Avatar later? Do I want to just plough on with Avatar? Do I want to go do something completely different, like this Mars project that has been floating around out there for the past 12 years?”

The Mars movie originally inspired Cameron to develop the 3D camera systems he then used on Avatar. As for the Avatar sequel, he already has one major sequence in hand. It was filmed for Avatar and then deleted. It will not appear in any DVD or Blu-ray extras, keeping it available for future use, Cameron explains.

“There are a number of options,” Cameron says, summing up his choices. “I haven’t decided. I have too many possibilities and not enough time.”

‘Avatar’ release breaks new ground | DVD | Entertainment | Toronto Sun