"Avatar" arrived in December, and it looks like the DVD will start shipping 11 months later. That's what James Cameron told MTV News when the writer/director stopped by the newsroom to chat on Wednesday (February 17).
"We're going to put 'Avatar' out probably in November on 3-D — bare bones, just the movie — and then we'll follow up with some kind of special edition later down the line," he said.
By the time the DVD arrives, major electronics manufacturers like Samsung, Panasonic and Sony should have home 3-D television systems available for purchase, albeit at a premium price. Pair one of those sets with a 3-D-enabled Blu-ray player, and while you won't exactly be re-creating an IMAX viewing environment, you will get three dimensions of Pandoran glory and still be close enough to your fridge to hit pause and grab a cold soda.
While Cameron has talked with us before about what we might find in terms of extras on the DVD, on Wednesday he expanded and clarified those comments. The DVD, he said, is likely to contain five or six minutes of fully finished, theatrical-release-quality deleted scenes and 15 minutes of footage that was excised early on and thus contains rough CG effects.
"The unfinished scenes look like a cheesy video game," Cameron said. "They're the performances — you can really see what the scenes would have been — but it doesn't have that magical realism of the finished film."
Among the deleted scenes will be footage focusing on the main group of Na'vi humanoids of Pandora, the introduction of other Na'vi clans, and the ritual hunt for a colorful creature called a Sturmbeest in which Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) takes part.
"It's all wonderful stuff, but it was sort of bogging down the middle section of the movie," Cameron told us back in December. "So there's plenty for a value-added DVD experience on this film. Of course, we'll have to go punch it all up and get it all mixed and stuff like that."
Check out everything we've got on "Avatar."
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