Sheigh Crabtree and Tatiana Siegel wrote:
James Cameron is moving forward on his next helming project, the sci-fi thriller "Battle Angel" for 20th Century Fox. The film marks the director's long-anticipated follow-up to "Titanic," which Fox co-financed with Paramount Pictures.
Fox declined comment and would not confirm that the project has been greenlighted, but Mali Finn Casting has placed an open casting call online for the lead actress in the new Cameron film.
The ad calls for female applicants age 16 to mid-20s who are athletic and agile with graceful movement and have an ear for languages and dialects. Submissions are due Dec. 19, the firm said.
"Battle Angel" is described as a big-budget adaptation of a 12-part Japanese manga series set in the 26th century that centers on 14-year-old female cyborg named Alita.
Fox's Emma Watts will shepherd the project for the studio, with production scheduled to begin in February.
Cameron has said publicly that he is planning to direct two movies back to back using a virtual-reality production process he refined and developed with visual effects cameraman and second unit director Rob Legato. The process is based on a photo-real version of the performance-capture technology used by Robert Zemeckis in "The Polar Express."
"Battle Angel" is the first project to employ the process and is set to come out in summer 2007. The second -- known in Cameron circles as "Project 880" -- is slated for 2009, the director has said.
Early last month, Fox executives visited a Los Angeles stage set up by Cameron's company, Lightstorm Entertainment, to view his proof-of-concept. They reviewed the director's latest digital-production process that includes 3-D high-definition digital-camera systems in a virtual production studio, allowing Cameron to make camera choices, edit, work with CG objects and direct actors on a stage within a virtual environment.
The frame-by-frame production setup allows Cameron to envision the entire film digitally before he shoots actors in live-action, performance-capture material.
Cameron demonstrated a real-world test of the technique on the stage to show the infinite digital production possibilities the system enables. The director had worked to debug and refine the system since early spring to get it to finished quality before demonstrating it to studio execs.
Source:
Dark Horizons
From AICN: James Cameron stresses BATTLE ANGEL ALITA is his next'!'!'
Harry wrote:Hey folks, Harry here... I'm so anxious to see Jim actually shooting on BATTLE ANGEL ALITA, I just need to see a new Cameron feature film. Also - I've been getting strange reports from around the web of Cameron's script treatment to AVATAR being forced off their script sites - which has me poking around to see if Cameron is looking to get AVATAR going again - or could that be Project 880? Naaah, PROJECT 880 is probably the film that comes out of the screen and starts bitchslapping you in your theater seat. Damn that Cameron and his futuristic filmgoing technology!
Hey guys,
Exciting news: it seems that "Battle Angel" is a definite go despite rumors that Cameron might delay it for the mysterious "Project 880." In an Aug. 9 article on The Independent website about Cameron's "Last Mysteries of the Titanic" documentary, he talks about Battle Angel, saying that the story will focus on Alita's relationship with a human man (probably Hugo from the manga).
"Finally, though, he thinks the time is right for him to return to feature films because he can now harness new technology to make something entirely fresh. Unsurprisingly, he has opted for an almost insanely ambitious sci-fi blockbuster. It is clear that the director of such ground-breaking films as The Terminator and Terminator 2, Aliens, The Abyss, and True Lies wants his comeback movie to make as big a splash as they did.
Inspired by Japanese graphic novels, he is currently developing Battle Angel, a cyborg thriller set in the 26th century. "It's going to be a mega-budget film shot in 3-D," Cameron enthuses. "It's set in a post-human world in the distant future, and a number of the main characters will be computer-generated. It's a kind of virtual film-making. We're building a whole new motion-capture technology. I'm impatient to get on with using the tools of the future."
He continues: "The main thrust is a love story between a human man and a female cyborg, and the film contains a range of characters from the fully human to the fully machine. I'm embracing the fact that human beings are amazingly adaptable. We've got a lot of flaws, but we're also pretty clever. We've got the tools, but can we use them?"
here's the link:
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If you use this you can call me "Desty Nova" (after the flan-loving mad scientist from the Battle Angel books)
Take Care,
Mike