James Cameron Talks About His Next Move

It seems almost absurd to ask James Cameron what he's working on next. If you haven't followed his career from Titanic to the most recent Comic Con, it hasn't just been Avatar for ten years. There's an IMAX movie called Ghosts of the Abyss in which Cameron investigated the wreck of the Titanic and showed us footage we never would have seen. To get that footage, Cameron and his brother - a big tinkerer - developed underwater rover cameras, so before Ghosts of the Abyss, it was simply impossible to do what he did. And of course, for Avatar, Cameron has pushed the limits of technology, too, and if for no other reason, that's a compelling argument to pay to see Avatar this December. But MTV did ask Cameron what the next move will be, and he said he's looking at the manga adaptation Battle Angel Alita: "I think Battle Angel will be very straightforward based on what we know right now...There are actually three technologies we designed from scratch for [Avatar]. One was the fusion, 3D camera system, which would have a big role in Battle Angel because it's more live-action by proportion. The other one is the facial performance capture, which would allow us to create Alita that way." Wait a minute...that's only two technologies. So what's missing? The growth of Simulcam, according to Cameron. "[It's] a real time tracking system that used the motion capture infrastructure on a live action stage, so that when I look through the eyepiece of my 3D camera, I see the set extensions as they will be," the Oscar winner explained. "We can even bring in CG characters in real-time, meaning actor-to-actor, meaning somebody's acting a CG character over here and I'm seeing him in my eyepiece interacting with an actor in a live-action shot." Holy shit.

Comments

[Johan]

So he's going forward with Alita, then? That's good to hear, I loved that manga as a teenager and he certainly seems to be one of the most capable directors to bring it to the big screen. Perhaps, unlike Snyder's venture into comicbook movies, Cameron might actually be able to somewhat retain the soul of the source material too - well, here's hoping he does anyway or that he adapts it in a meaningful way.