James Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic adventure AVATAR will be released nationwide on December 18th, 2009, the world premiere on December 10th. It was previously reported that the runtime will be 3 hours long, which I didn’t mind, considering the story would be more or less in the similar themes as… Dances With Wolves which was also about 3 hours long, so I said bring it on! But now Hollywood Reporter said the actual runtime for AVATAR is actually 150 minutes.
I can still tolerate that, just as long as the story and the characters are more engaging and solid than Roland Emmerich’s 2012, which was 158 minutes of torture session. By the way, The Dark Knight’s runtime was 152 minutes, I’m not saying AVATAR would bank in the same success but only time will tell. Keep in mind that when James Cameron’s Titanic was released, it didn’t become a box office king of all time in just one night, it took several weekends to get it to where it is now.
On another note, slashfilm pointed out the other day that 30 minutes of AVATAR still needs some more FX touch-up. But marketsaw says the involvement of FX wizards of Weta is practically done. Nothing to worry about though, there are 6 other FX houses working on the film and producer John Landau assures us, via Wall Street Journal that “Every shot we get back raises the standard for what follows,” meaning in the end we’re going to get the best quality of AVATAR. Look on the bright side, at least they’re not postponing the release date like what happened to THE ROAD last year.
