There was recently a rumor based on a report from MarketSaw that James Cameron had rejected eight trailers for his upcoming Avatar. Based on their lack of quality, the rumor said, he was taking time to cut his own. Not only that, but we were also told he’d be bringing footage to ShoWest.

Surprise, surprise, it was all bullshit. Harry at AICN wrote to Cameron, who replied with some clarification. It doesn’t even sound all that much like spin:

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.

I don’t want to call out MarketSaw, necessarily, because they’ve broken quite a bit of legit news with respect to Avatar. But this one sounded insubstantial and fishy in the first place, and it was disappointing to see it regurgitated all over the internet, even in a laggy news week. There are times when echoing rumor can be a good way to start discussion on some new angle, but this was just more of the same ‘Cameron is a perfectionist’ stuff we’ve heard for years.