Los Angeles, Sep 22: Disney has agreed on an exclusive deal to build attractions based on James Cameron's “Avatar” at its theme parks - starting with Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.
The first “Avatar” land, which begins construction in 2013 and is expected to open about three years later, is to be an immersive experience in a land spanning several acres. It will cost around $400 million (U.S.)
“The goal here is to put you on Pandora, and let you inhabit a space that you've only seen through the window of a movie theatre before,” Cameron told the Associated Press on Wednesday (21 September 2011) at a 3D entertainment conference.
Cameron said the attractions based on the top-grossing film of all time would bring the lush, bioluminescent planet of Pandora to life and would include animatronics and 3-D and holographic technology.
Cameron is working on the second and third installments of “Avatar,” to be released in December 2014 and December 2015.
The park will include elements of the second and third films and elements that aren't included in any of the films.
Cameron said the new theme park attractions were different from his first theme park experience, creating a multimedia attraction for Universal Studios based on his “Terminator 2” film in the mid-1990s.
“This is a little bit different challenge,” he said. “But what we're talking about with this Disney project is a land. We're not talking one attraction. We're talking a number of attractions --12 acres of Pandora. So this is a much more comprehensive kind of project. And I'll be working with the ride show designers, and with the various presentation space designers and so on to come up with something that's a complete experience, that might be a half-day or more of your time to go through. Not a single attraction. So it's really several orders of magnitude more complex, cooler, more challenging, more fun.”
The first installment of “Avatar” was a 3-D movie about a race of blue-skinned Na'vi who defend the moon they live on from invading humans.
It has grossed about $2.8 billion in theaters worldwide since its December 2009 release and has brought in many millions more from home video sales. AP
