Why So Blu?

Avatar Blu-ray in April?

Could it really be that the most successful film of all time will be landing on the Blu-ray format this April?  According to the below article in the Wall Street Journal it sure seems that way.  You can read the full article below, but long story short, Fox is rumored to be issuing a bare bones Blu-ray release of Avatar on April 22nd with a 3-D Blu-ray release happening sometime near the end of the year.  I guess either you can call it double dipping or brilliant marketing just waiting for 3D technology to catch up in the home place.  Either way, fans of the planet Pandora will be back home soon enough.

By Christopher John Farley

In a wide-ranging interview today, director James Cameron said that his blockbuster movie “Avatar” will have a 3-D Blu-ray release later this year.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who is nominated for best director at the coming Oscars, said that with a wave of companies set to release 3-D compatible TVs, the time was right to issue his film in 3-D for the home viewer.

“It’s all right on schedule,” said Cameron. “We’ll do the Blu-ray and the standard def DVD April 22^nd, that’s our plan as of right now, and that’ll be pretty much bare bones. And then we’ll do a value-added DVD and a 3-D Blu-ray in I think November sometime.”

Fox Home Entertainment couldn’t confirm the release dates.

Cameron said he hopes to do a sequel to “Avatar” but he wants to do it “cheaper and faster.” He said the sequel will be “a continuation of the same characters. We’re going to widen the universe in quotes, meaning the envelope of the setting of the story.”

“Avatar” was released by Twentieth Century Fox, a division of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.

The director has said he wants to try to shine a light on environmental issues by playing up the green aspects of “Avatar.” “We’re not going to bequeath to our children a world that’s a sustainable world at the rate that we’re going,” he said. “It’s gonna take a fundamental reboot of the way we view our relationship with the natural world and each other and with business and with the economy…that indefinite growth is not a good thing.”

April 22, the date Cameron said is set for the release of the initial DVD and Blu-ray of “Avatar,” is also Earth Day.

Cameron has been promoting his Oscar candidacy this week in New York, but he said he’s also pulling for the success of his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, who is nominated for best director for “The Hurt Locker.” She could become the first woman to win in the category–but she’d have to beat Cameron. “Honestly, it blunts my desire to go after it quite so aggressively, because I’d love to see her feted and anointed as the first female director [to win an Oscar],” says Cameron.

Cameron also fondly recalled directing Bigelow in a 1980s music video called “Reach” that was shot for Bill Paxton’s band Martini Ranch. The clip has recently gotten attention on the Web.

“The whole thing was made for some ridiculously small amount of money, everyone did it for free,” says Cameron of the music video. “And I had met Kathryn recently, she had just cast Bill in ‘Near Dark’…we talked her into playing the Clint Eastwood character and of course she was great. I think that’s the only acting I ever heard of her doing.”