battle angel alita Tagged Articles at Cinematical

On Friday night at 7pm, after most fanboys had already fulfilled their quotient of nerdgasms and geek-freakouts, Peter Jackson and James Cameron appeared together at a panel hosted by Entertainment Weekly entitled "The Visionaries." Rather than just talking about their current projects, however, the two iconic filmmakers offered a sort of State of the Cinematic Union, addressing problems and challenges they face, even as they addressed a few rumors about what their respective futures hold.

The most important of their observations and revelations:

Do you want to make a movie trilogy? Are you a big enough director to command a lot of money and studio respect up front? If you answered "yes" to both of these two questions, you might want to consider the hot new trend of filming at least two of your three flicks back-to-back in the same shoot! It is time saving, money saving, and it lets you get your flicks to the screen within a year or so of each other, keeping audiences fresh and well aware of your story. This method has already been successfully proved by such franchises as The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, and the currently popular Pirates of the Caribbean, and has thus far met with strong approval. It is the hot new way to do things in Hollywood, and if you want to stay current with movie trends you should really consider this method.

Just ask James Cameron, who is so enamored of the technique he is considering using it for two upcoming projects of his. Cameron plans to shoot the first film of a Project 880 franchise (probably called Avatar) as well as his much anticipated Battle Angel film and gauge the box office reception they get. If either (or both) of them are successful, he'd like to shoot parts two and three back-to-back. His only stipulation is each film would have to stand alone as an independent story as well -- no big cliffhanger events at the end of each film to draw you back for the next episode.