Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Hot on the heels of James Cameron's Cine Expo pimping of D-cinema comes this juicy rumor about the direction he's going in terms of effects for AVATAR. This is still classified as a rumor, but I have had this confirmed by other sources. If I were a betting man, I'd put money on this one panning out. Looks like WETA (LOTR, KONG) is doing the effects for AVATAR, which will be done 100% motion-capture and will be completely digital. Their mo-cap work is easily the best in the business (just look at Gollum and Kong himself if you need evidence) and this is nothing but good news. However, and it may just be me, I am a little sad to hear Cameron going 100% digital. I love good mo-cap work just as much as the next guy, but Cameron's eye for capturing real life has been very important to my movie geek up-bringing. I trust him as a filmmaker, though, so I'm more than willing to take this ride with him. Enjoy the juicy rumors below... of them, the Weta stuff is the only thing I've confirmed. That budget and VFX supervisor I can't vouche for. Enjoy, though!

Hi Harry, first time scooper, but I've been with you since 1997 (btw, I STILL remember that hilarious rumor of ID4 part 2: Fantastic Voyage with Jeff Goldblum). Also, I apologize if this is nothing you don't already know.

I overheard some news from a crew member working on James Cameron's AVATAR. I admit it's not much, but here's what I heard from my source:

Apparently James Cameron has hired the visual effects supervisor from MASTER AND COMMANDER to fill that duty on AVATAR. Now, I thought I overheard my source saying the guy's name was Peter something, but I went to IMDB and looked under MASTER AND COMMANDER's vfx crew and didn't find any Peters in the bunch. But I'm sure it's indeed somebody from MASTER AND COMMANDER. You might want to ask your close circle of sources about this.

More importantly, Weta is doing the visual effects, some 2000 effects shots in all. The film right now is budgeted at $315 million. That sounds like a lot, but then, the success of TITANIC has given Cameron carte blanche with regard to budget. The film is indeed scheduled for a 2008 release. Cameron currently has effects tests on his laptop that he's showing around to crew members to entice them to come aboard the project.

That's all I have, but I hope this helps.

If you use this, call me Mr. Mystery.