Director James Cameron‘s painstaking process to bring “Avatar” to the big screen will be the subject of a new documentary.
“Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films” will premiere Nov. 7 exclusively on the streaming service Disney+. The two-part documentary will offer a deep-dive into the making of 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” as well as a glimpse at the upcoming “Avatar: Fire and Ash” with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with cast and filmmakers. Some of the many bold-face names that appear in the film include Cameron, the late producer Jon Landau, and stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña and Kate Winslet.
“Avatar” follows the clan of Jake Sully (Worthington) and Neytiri (Saldaña) on the alien moon of Pandora. The original 2009 blockbuster and very delayed sequel “The Way of Water” each grossed over $2 billion globally and stand as two of the biggest movies in history. Meanwhile, Cameron is the sole filmmaker with three movies to generate more than $2 billion, the other being “Titanic.”
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” Cameron teases in the documentary trailer. “As much as we use computers and technology, ‘Avatar’ is made by an incredibly talented team of people who bring every expression, every emotional beat and the entire world to life.”
Cameron uses motion capture to translate the performance of the actors, including their body movements and facial expressions, into the blue humanoid characters known as the Na’vi. With “The Way of Water,” the director and collaborators were able to perfect that meticulous process to underwater sequences. Meanwhile the cast learned to free dive in a massive, state-of-the-art 680,000-gallon water tank.
“If not for the actors,” Saldaña says in the trailer, “Pandora would just be a beautiful world with no life in it.”
Adds Worthington, “There’s not one thing that you see us do that is animated. It is all us.”
“Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films” was directed and produced by Thomas C. Grane and executive produced by Cameron and Rae Sanchini.
Saldaña recently urged Cameron to consider a documentary about the making of “Avatar” to “finally give us a chance to explain, in a meticulous way, why performance capture is the most empowering form of acting,” the actor told Beyond the Noise.
“Avatar: Fire and Ash” will hit theaters just before Christmas on Dec. 19. Meanwhile, two sequels — “Avatar 4” and “Avatar 5” — are scheduled for the holiday season in 2029 and 2031.
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