One of the cool things about having James Cameron in your email address book is that whenever some Avatar news goes flying around you can check whether it is true or not, and that is exactly what AICN did after talk of Cameron rejecting 8 trailers appeared online a few days ago.

Harry,

Good to hear from you. As usual the rumor mill is grinding out mostly spurious stuff. I have no plans at present to go to Showest, and in any event we have decided not to unveil material there.

As to the trailer story, I have no idea where that came from but I haven’t rejected any trailers (yet) since I haven’t seen any yet. They’re still working on them for presentation, which presumably will be soon. I’m sure I’ll reject a couple once I have the chance. Right now I’m just focused on having a movie to sell.

The cut is shaping up nicely and the stuff coming in from Weta Digital is astonishing. Every once in a while, as we are absorbed in some intensely detailed discussion about sub-surface scattering or the way a tail is moving in the animation, I’ll just stop and have this moment of clarity, as if seeing it for the first time. And I realize that’s what the lunar astronauts must have felt like. They’d be in the middle of some complex set of procedures and they’d look out the window and go “Oh, yeah. That’s the frickin’ moon!” It feels like that.

Anyway, back to the grind.

Jim out