Amphibious director James Cameron has again depressurized and surfaced from his subaquatic stronghold to dispense teaser tidbits to those of us who’ve been waiting nearly a decade for him to create something non-documentary.
The tech-happy helmer has now shared that although he’s still planning his sorta live-action adaptation of the manga Battle Angel Alita (which he’s been working on since he announced it at Comic Con waaaay back in 2002), he is also simultaneously planning another new movie called Project 880. And although his Lightstorm Entertainment mouthpiece refused to further expound on that top secret venture, it could in fact become his next project and even further delay Alita (which was set to actually begin production in late 2005). Could it be the latest incarnation of his ambitious sci-fi space exploration project Avatar, long thought abandoned? Maybe!
For those unfamiliar with the property, Battle Angel Alita (based on the manga by Yukito Kishiro) tells the epic story of a female cyborg discovered in a junk pile with no memory of her past. Her journey to uncover her secret history leads her into grand-scale battles while broaching larger questions about the line between man and machine. Cameron himself has been chipping at a script originally penned by Laeta Kalogridis (Alexander).
Cameron became infatuated with hi-def 3-D cameras and other digital filmmaking technology while making Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep, and also plans to use a new version of the “performance capture” equipment that provided such creepy results for Robert Zemeckis’ The Polar Express. He also has Titanic FX guy Rob Legato building a “prototype virtual cinematography system” to expedite previsualization on movies that will take him forever to make anyway.
The notoriously capricious Cameron, who made remarks alluding to a True Lies sequel as recently as last month, also plans to chronicle the love story between “freedivers” Francisco Ferreras and his wife Audrey Mestre, who perished while trying to break her own depth record.