James Cameron teasing 'Avatar' for free on Imax, 3D screens

By Steven Zeitchik and Borys Kit

James Cameron and Fox took the wraps off their pricey, visually splashy 3D movie at the San Diego Convention Center's Hall H on Thursday, to a deeply enthusiastic, if not over-the-top hysterical, crowd on Thursday afternoon.

Cameron warmed up the sci-fi-minded crowd by asking, "Who wants to go to another planet?" before rolling nearly 25 minutes of scenes from his otherworldly tale, which is set on the fictional planet of Pandorum. (The news came on a panel where Cameron announced that on Aug. 21, Fox will take over as many Imax and 3D screens as it can to show, free of charge, 15 minutes of promotional footage from "Avatar" to anyone who wants to see it.)

At the panel, a few expositional scenes showing main character Sam Worthington becoming an avatar (a blue-skinned human-alien hybrid) segued into a series of jungle battle scenes -- many of them of striking color and scope -- in which Worthington and co-star Zoe Saldana fight with prehistoric-looking creatures. The footage showed a vividly original world complete with its own language and ecology.

"Everybody always asks, where have you been? Well, that's where I've been: Pandorum," said Cameron, who hasn't directed a narrative feature since 1997's "Titanic."

The footage overlapped with but was not identical to the slightly shorter material that Fox showed at Cinema Expo in Amsterdam last month, the studio said.

The stakes are high for Fox, which has made the Dec. 18 film the cornerstone of its fall slate. The film is important enough to the studio that it was introduced by Fox Filmed Entertainment co-chairman Tom Rothman, who noted that "moments likes these are rare for a movie company."

At a news conference after the panel, Cameron acknowledged the studio's support, saying: "They wrote us a big check and were with us right down the line."

How big a check has become one of the bigger Hollywood mysteries of the season. While some estimates have pegged the budget for "Avatar" in the $300 million range, Fox has stuck to a figure much closer to $230 million.

Cameron has faced a lot of talk about budgets ever since "Titanic," which went on to become the biggest worldwide grosser in history with $1.8 billion, was released.

If the "Avatar" footage didn't elicit the hysterical reactions of the "New Moon" and "Alice in Wonderland" panels earlier in the day from the Comic-Con faithful, that was understandable. The "Avatar" unspooling marks one of the rare times in recent Comic-Con memory that a film of this scale has not been based on a pre-existing property.

That the film is an unknown quantity poses both an advantage and a disadvantage for Fox: While the movie comes without the benefit of prior awareness (and thus makes it a harder sell in the short run), it gives the studio a chance to shape perception in a way that remakes and sequels don't allow.

The need to build awareness was behind Cameron's surprise announcement about screening footage for free in theaters in August.

While the unusual move to give moviegoers a deeper look at the upcoming movie is an expensive gambit for the studio's marketing department, Fox clearly hopes it will show people what cannot simply be translated in a 2D trailer or in TV spots.

Avatar’s orignality was a topic of conversation during the Q&A, when a questioner thanked Cameron for "making something origninal, that’s not a remake of a sequel.” The statement was met with a loud ovation from the audience.

Asked about the message of his opus, Cameron said he something larger on his mind than simple entertainment. His intent, he said, was to "make something that has the spoonful of sugar of action and adventure, but also that has a conscience," and that in the process of viewing it, audiences would "think about how you interact with nature and your fellow man."

Read more about the "Avatar" panel at THR's Comic-Con blog