Maybe old news but had no idea there was going to be an avatar2, 3 and 4

Whatever happened to that lawsuit? I think Dean is absolutely right: Cameron certain did "borrow" the look of the alien planet from the Yes album covers. The question is how much is an homage, how much is an influence, and how much is a downright ripoff?

 

These things take a long time. I think the suit was filed in July or August. The last significant thing that happened in the case is that Cameron filed a motion to dismiss. The court has not yet ruled on this motion. In civil litigation the parties are almost always working behind the scenes to get things settled, so I'd say there's a 95% chance Roger gets a settlement of some sort. If Dean gets a settlement from the first film, then part of what they negotiate would also be the licensing agreement for the next films (he can't sue for a copyright violation that hasn't yet occurred, I don't think), which would probably be for a decent bit of money.

I also think that Cameron was definitely influenced by Dean's work. I don't know that anything in Avatar rises to the level of copying, though. We'll see.

 

What generally happens is, it never gets to court, they sign a non-disclosure agreement, and then the plantiff gets X amount of dollars (I would hope at least a million) for the infringement. If he pushes as much as SF writer Harlan Ellison did when he sued over Terminator's similarity to a couple of Outer Limits episodes, he gets less money but also receives a credit at the end. In Harlan's case, it says, "the producers acknowledge the works of Harlan Ellison."

 

Sigourney Weaver is officially confirmed for the sequels, coming back as a new character! Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and Stephen Lang are also confirmed. It will be interesting to see how Lang's character comes back.

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/s...-sequels-as-new-character-1201217032/?_r=true

Cameron and 20th Century Fox made the announcement Monday, noting that Weaver’s Gracey Augustine character perished in 2009′s “Avatar.”

“Sigourney and I have a long creative history, dating back to 1985 when we made ‘Aliens,’” Cameron said. “We’re good friends who’ve always worked well together, so it just feels right that she’s coming back for the Avatar sequels. Her character of Grace Augustine, as fans know, died in the first movie, so she’s playing a different and in many ways more challenging character in the upcoming films.”

Cameron did not specify what role Weaver will be portraying.

During an October interview, “Avatar” star Sam Worthington said he believed production on the sequel would begin by next October.

Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Stephen Lang will reprise their roles from the original.

Cameron had announced in August there would be three sequels and that screenwriters Josh Friedman (“War of the Worlds”), Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (“Rise of the Planets of the Apes”), and Shane Salerno (“Savages,” “Salinger”) would collaborate with him on screenplays for “Avatar 2,” “Avatar 3″ and “Avatar 4.”

more from Cameron on the writing process starting with 1,500 pages of notes/concepts/ideas

http://www.slashfilm.com/james-cameron-avatar-sequels-writing/

A monster project for sure making all three at once, BIG money involved, tons of pressure and expectations galore, can they pull it off? or will it crash and burn? the first movie pulled in $2.782 billion worldwide, set DVD-Blu Ray sales records and continues to sell. While the original followed a familiar path with its story (adding sci-fi elements, a modern eco/anti-war for profit message) I have to wonder where they are going to go with these movies in terms of storyline, I have no doubt that the movies will be major eye candy and the tech behind it all will push the envelope once again. I guess we'll find out in December 2016.

 

that's not what his art department people would say, they spent months in China shooting a variety of locations that influenced the look of those scenes including the floating mountains (basically sharp peaks shrouded in fog giving the illusion that they are floating), the Dean issue arose after the fact if I recall correctly, whether the artists were actually aware of Roger Dean's work or not, who knows, more than likely the influences for both are the same with a different interpretation/spin on the subject matter, I don't think you can rip off the look of something that actually exists in nature

 

I never saw the first one. Wasn't avoiding it, just never got around to seeing it.

 

...curious of your opinion when you do....
ME? I'm sorry I did...

 

Except that they have examples of Cameron talking about the Yes album covers in interviews when the movie was released. Cameron should just pay Dean the money.

 

YES, like he can't afford to.

 

I see 2, 3 and 4 are all pre-production.

 

After I saw it I commented to an usher that Noam Chomsky must have written the Screenplay. I remember hearing of people being depressed and even killing themselves because they couldn't live in the world depicted in AVATAR. I'd get depressed if I DID live in it. I thought it was ugly.

 

I think part of it has to do with the majority of people being so disconnected with nature that they felt the world depicted in the movie is the way life used to be like (or some idealized version of it)….to them I'd suggest they go out camping someplace with zero modern conveniences, predators and having to actually hunt and gather their food and water, they might change their tune in a hurry.

As for the sequels only Sigourney has said anything of note recently, that basically her character from the first movie is dead and that she's playing a different one for the sequels.

 

Remember in SLEEPER, when Diane Keaton in the woods is wailing"I want my orb, I want to watch TV", and Woody Allen says"You'd be great to take on a camping trip!"

 

I never saw the first one. I will wait until the four movie set comes out on Blu-ray and then watch them.

 

Can't say I do because I was barely out of kindergarten when that movie was released, guess I need to check it out (Woody Allen does sci-fi/comedy?)

 

In the future, if they can terraform an entire planet, filtering out a wee bit of smoke seems kinda trivial, better technology eh? At least they seem to have left political correctness behind in the 21st century.

 

This is a very interesting point that I've just noticed. It's part of the premise of the great novel The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. For what it's worth, though, I'd say the degree to which language changes over the course of a few centuries is sometimes overstated. It is true that written English looks very different now than it did in 1715, but that's because (at the risk of overstating things) most of the written English that survives from that time was written by people of the upper classes largely educated in Latin. But spoken English -- the English spoken by working people in Boston in 2015 is not that different from the English spoken by working people in Yorkshire in 1715. An 18th century Englishman would have little trouble understanding a 21st century American, barring references to technology, etc., that didn't exist then.

 

Until TV and radio broadcasts became powerful enough, Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay featured residents who spoke a colonial dialect, due to their isolation. It was/is primarily a fishing village.

 

I'm a big fan of Haldeman's work, and that's a great novel. But I still think there would be hundreds of new colloquialisms, idioms, and other expressions in the language that would make it a bit of a chore to understand 150 years from now. I would have no problem if Avatar was set 50 years in our future. Today, we can watch a 1950 movie and understand it perfectly, but at the same time the language is "of a time," audibly different in rhythm and manner than the way we speak today. Take that to 1900 or 1850 and the differences become greater. There is a point where it's almost another language.

Naaaa, it's BS put in the movie to show that Sigourney Weaver's character was colorful, obnoxious, stubborn, and prone to unusual thinking. This is covered in the script, too.

What puzzles me is how Sigourney is going to come back in the next movie...

 

Although, on the other hand, movies being what they are, they're not always a good indication of how people actually speak in the time they're made! It is true that the affected mid-Atlantic accents of most movie actors in 1950 has more or less disappeared.

Efforts at more naturalistic dialogue tend to date better ... most people have no trouble understanding the dialogue in My Fair Lady, even though much of it was written over a hundred years ago (in Shaw's Pygmalion).

 

I had no idea there was going to be an Avatar 1.

 

tech news for the sequels

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/nab-avatar-sequels-use-new-789592