Avatar remains the highest grossing movie in history and the Avatar franchise is only going to gt bigger over the coming years. James Cameron recently announced that there will be four Avatar sequels instead of just three, with the first sequel hopefully being released in 2018 and the last in 2023. Plus there’s Pandora – The World of Avatar, the highly themed land that’s coming to Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida in 2017 and will open with two multi-million dollar attractions. In the meantime, check out these 11 things you never knew about Avatar.
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Inspiration
It was Disney’s Pocahontas that gave James Cameron the idea for Avatar.
2. Na’vi biology
You may not have realized that Avatars have five fingers, five toes and eyebrows, whereas the Na’vi have four fingers, four toes and no eyebrows.
3. A long wait
James Cameron had big ideas about the movie, but felt that current technology wasn’t advanced enough to help him realize his vision, plus the special effects would have pushed the movie’s budget way past $400 million. The movie was put on hold for about 10 years and it was only when Cameron saw Gollum in Lord of the Rings that he realized technology was advanced enough.
4. Making the Na’vi attractive
Even though the Na’vi aren’t placental, James Cameron wanted the female Na’vi to have breasts so they would look attractive from a human’s perspective.
5. CGI
The movie is roughly 60% CGI and 40% live action.
6. A lot of manhours
Speaking of CGI, each frame of the CGI scenes, which is roughly 1/24th of a second, took an average of 47 hours to produce.
7. The Na’vi language
The Na’vi language was created by Dr. Paul R. Frommer, a linguist who James Cameron hired to create a language that was easy to pronounce, but didn’t sound like any existing language. Over 1,000 words were created.
8. All work and no pay (potentially)
James Cameron promised his bosses at 20th Century Fox that if the movie flopped, he would hand them back his director’s fee.
9. A lucky break
When Sam Worthington auditioned for the role of Jake Sully, he had no idea what he was auditioning for, nor did he even know anything about the movie or who the movie’s director was – in fact, he thought it was all just a waste of time.
10. A trip to Hawaii, anyone?
Because the actors wouldn’t have many live sets to work with, James Cameron flew the cast and crew out to Hawaii, where they spent time exploring the forests and going on adventurous hikes so they could get a better idea of what it would be like to move around the alien world of Pandora.
11. Worth the wait
It took four years to make the movie, from pre-production to release.
