Corona | Coming Attractions

This new Avatar image of Neytiri, the Na'vi character that Zoe Saldana plays, first appeared in today's USA Today article discussing the upcoming holiday film season.

Avatar: Music From the Motion Picture will feature the orchestral score composed and conducted by James Horner as well as a song performed by Grammy Award-nominated singer Leona Lewis, "I See You". The song is produced by Horner and Simon Franglen, the same pair that produced the Oscar-winning Celine Dion song from Titanic, "My Heart Will Go On". The album will go on sale both digitally and physically on December 15.

Over on the Japanese Yahoo portal there's a promo video for Avatar that shows domestic audiences a lot more new footage than we've seen from the second trailer. Sure, there's Japanese subtitles over the imagery but the descriptive dialogue is all in English. Watch and enjoy.

After all the bills have been paid will Avatar have cost $500 million dollars to produce and market? That's the number that The New York Times guesstimates in an article published today about the true cost of the blockbuster. The Times also got insiders to leak to them the costs associated with the film including who shares the biggest risk in Avatar not recouping its investment. Surprisingly, it's not News Corporation, the parent company of 20th Century Fox, that stands to lose the most.

The production budget for Avatar currently waivers at around $230 million dollars. Fox is getting more bang for its buck by getting tax rebates from New Zealand's film program for employing Weta Digital to create the movie's large amount of special effects. Worldwide marketing costs should come in at about $150 million dollars.

The Times reports, via insiders privy to the internal finances of the project, that 60 percent of Avatar's $230 million dollar budget is being paid for by two private equity firms, Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Media. Neither company chose to confirm the amount of captial that they have invested in Avatar.

There's also a condition in the contracts that if Avatar's budget should exceed $300 million dollars then James Cameron would defer his paycheck until the movie's investors received their share in income.

The second trailer for James Cameron's Avatar has been released online, coming in with a runtime of three minutes and thirty-one seconds. With more emphasis on the character arc of wheelchair bound marine Jake Sully and his new life on the alien world of Pandora, this Avatar trailer does more to sell the film's story than the first teaser trailer offered.

Coming Soon reports that the second trailer for Avatar will arrive in theaters this coming Friday and run approximately three minutes and thirty seconds. "You should really see this in theaters anyways as we've learned that this is THE trailer, the one that will show you much more story," writes the site.

The first inside look at James Horner's eagerly anticipated score for Avatar reveals the composer's approach to the music, the orchestral set-up, who his music team members are and what record label will release the original soundtrack album. The info comes courtesy of MovieScore Magazine and they mention that while Horner has had months to work on Avatar's score (unlike the three weeks he had to get the music for Aliens done back in 1986), the composer's main orchestra used for the score features over 100 musicians, including eight horns, four trumpets and five trombones. MSM also reports that the score will "feature vocalists singing in the film’s Na’vi language, as well as a few other acoustic and electronic instrumentalists."

Four months ahead of the movie's opening and advance tickets for Avatar have already gone on sale. Fandango and MovieTickets.com are two outlets that have begun selling tickets to traditional screening as well as IMAX showings. According to one rep the sales have been "healthy."

In the new issue of Empire there are photos showing everyone's first look at Sigourney Weaver's Na'vi avatar (seen on the left) as well as new shots of Zoe Saldana's Neytiri, Sam Worthington's avatar and Stephen Lang's human military commander, Quaritch. MarketSaw was sent high-quality scans of the Empire spread and has them on the site.

The first trailer for James Cameron's Avatar has finally arrived. Apple has it in small/medium/large/HD formats and we've embedded a medium version of the trailer below. Thoughts?

We have also added 26 new images to our Avatar gallery.

Gaze upon the first officially released photo showing one of the Avatar aliens in the context of the film. Slashfilm was the first out of the gate to publish the image which 20th Century Fox released to print outlets earlier this week. The image in question shows ex-Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) outside the tank of one of the cloned Na'vi avatar bodies that the humans use to ride their consciousness in when walking unsuited on the surface of Pandora. You can make out another Na'vi cloned body behind the one in the foreground and there's a third floating to the side of Worthington's head.

Details on how you can get tickets to see the 16 minute preview of Avatar footage has finally surfaced. Next Monday, on August 17 at 12:00 PM PST, you can get a free ticket to see a local screening of the footage that will take place on Friday, August 21 in the evening. You need to visit the official Avatar website at that time to get a screening pass and it will be first come, first served.

While a trailer for Avatar will also debut in theaters on that Friday, it won't contain nearly as much footage as the special preview will.

An image of the upcoming McFarlane toy action figure for Avatar Jake Sully was discovered by CHUD and posted to the site. If you've wanted to get a better idea of the proportion of one of the blue Na'vi aliens and see what they would look like wearing clothes, here's your opportunity.

Latino Review isn't saying where they got their new Avatar poster which shows Zoe Saldana's Na'vi character but there she is in all glowy blue and staring at us.

UPDATE: Fox has released the poster and it should begin appearing in theater lobbies this week.

Right after his Avatar panel yesterday James Cameron sat down with Variety's Stu Oldman for a one-on-one discussion about the hype growing for his picture and his working with 3-D.

And the official website for the movie has launched, timed with the Avatar panel at Comic-Con: www.avatarmovie.com.