Amazon.com has now made James Cameron’s Avatar available to pre-order on DVD and Blu-ray. Yesterday 20th Century Fox confirmed the release date of April 22nd, which Cameron mentioned last month. The director also said that the upcoming release will only contain a ‘bare bones’ version of the film, with a 3D version hitting the shelves in November with all the special features, deleted and unfinished scenes. I guess they want people to buy it twice.

We also heard last week that 20th Century Fox are thinking about re-releasing the film in 3D later this year as they believe there’s still a lot more money to be made. Alice in Wonderland gained all the 3D screens earlier this month after Avatar had them to itself for nearly 2 months straight.

You can pre-order Avatar via the links below:

Avatar [Blu-ray] | Avatar [DVD]

It seems $2.6 billion worldwide just isn’t enough for some people. In an interview with USA Today Avatar director James Cameron said that 20th Century Fox may be looking to re-release the film on 3D screens after all the summer blockbusters are out of the way. Alice in Wonderland, which was released last week, has taken up all the 3D screens after Avatar claimed them for 2 straight months. Apparently Avatar could have made another few hundred million if it still had them all to itself.

Q: When is Avatar coming out in 3D on Blu-ray?

A: We’re not officially announcing it right now but I’m hoping for fall. The wildcard is that we might be re-releasing the movie this fall. It’s kind of gotten stomped out (in theaters) because of Alice in Wonderland. The word we’re getting back from exhibitors is we probably left a couple of hundred million dollars on the table as a result. The question is the appetite still going to be there after the summer glut of movies. We’re going to assess that. We’re talking about maybe adding in additional footage and doing something creative.

The only big 3D release toward the end of the year is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 which will be released in November, so a re-release in September/October could be likely. That is, if Cameron wants to battle for 3D screens with Saw VII or Resident Evil: Afterlife.

Cameron also said they have plans to convert Titanic into 3D and re-release it in the spring of 2012, which will be the 100 year anniversary of the sailing of the ship.

Would you be interested in seeing Avatar again on the big screen later this year?

I’m going to assume that as Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time just about everyone has seen it; therefore I am able to talk about spoilers freely. If you haven’t seen Avatar yet then look elsewhere, as spoilers will be written below.

Sigourney Weaver, who plays Dr. Grace Augustine, recently appeared on French TV show “Le Grand Journal” and was asked whether she would be appearing in Avatar 2. Those who saw the film will remember she was shot by Quaritch and attempts to transfer her mind into her Avatar failed. This lead to the wailing spirit lady Na’vi to pronounce her dead at the scene, or in Na’vi terms, “she is with Eywa now”.

In the interview (which you can watch in heavily dubbed French below) Weaver says that her character still exists “in the tree” and director James Cameron has thought of some ideas on how to keep “the family together” (i.e. the main cast). Considering Cameron created Pandora and everything in it he can do just about anything he wants, so bringing Grace Augustine shouldn’t be a problem, especially as her spirit is still hanging with Eywa.

Weaving talks about Avatar 2 around the 3 minute 30 second mark:

Do you have 22 minutes free? If not, I suggest you make yourself available for the foreseeable future as Yahoo! has released a 22 minute behind the scenes featurette which shows us…how Avatar was made, basically.

We see James Cameron and the cast in an Hawaiian rainforest in order to get a better grasp at what it would be like to be on Pandora. We are taken through all the stages of the film making process, from Zoe Saldana training for her role as Neytiri, to James Horner crafting his score for the film. It’s definitely a must see for those who loved the film, and even for those who didn’t.

After watching that it just re-enforces why Avatar won the Golden Globe earlier this week for best film, and why it will hopefully win a bunch of Oscars in a few weeks time. While I love Inglourious Basterds and all those other contenders as much as the next guy, a lot more time and effort went into making Avatar. And while it didn’t have the best screenplay out of the bunch, it definitely made up for it in terms of visual effects and just generally setting a benchmark in terms of film making.

Avatar has received many reviews and ratings since it’s release just over 3 weeks ago, however it has been given a rather unique rating by a site called SceneSmoking.org. They’ve given it a “black lung”, along with the following review:

In the world of Avatar, everything is modern and technologically forward, but obviously the creators were not thinking forward when they included smoking in several scenes of the movie.

One of their main issues comes from a scene where Dr. Grace Augustine, played by Sigourney Weaver, is seen smoking on-screen after coming out of her mind transporting/fridge/incubator machine. She clearly hadn’t smoked up in a while, and she was craving one like most smokers do. When I watched the scene I acknowledged that she was smoking, and I remember it quite clearly, however I thought it added to her ‘pissed off scientist working for idiots’ character, and it shouldn’t really be an issue.

Thankfully, James Cameron took time out of counting up Avatar’s box office gross to address this issue:

In a statement sent by e-mail over the weekend, Mr. Cameron said he had never intended Ms. Weaver’s character, Grace Augustine, to be “an aspirational role model” for teenagers.

“She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes,” wrote Mr. Cameron. “Also, from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.”

Speaking as an artist, Mr. Cameron said: “I don’t believe in the dogmatic idea that no one in a movie should smoke. Movies should reflect reality. If it’s O.K. for people to lie, cheat, steal and kill in PG-13 movies, why impose an inconsistent morality when it comes to smoking? I do agree that young role-model characters should not smoke in movies, especially in a way which suggests that it makes them cooler or more accepted by their peers.”

Smoking, Mr. Cameron concluded, “is a filthy habit which I don’t support, and neither, I believe, does ‘Avatar.’ ”

Well said Mr. Cameron. I would understand SceneSmoking.org’s frustration if, for example, the main characters from Twilight were seen smoking in a few scenes as lots of young teenage girls watch those movies and they would probably think it was cool. We’d have thousands of young girls sucking on a cigarette like it was Robert Pattinson’s…

If the release of the new Avatar trailer yesterday was the highlight of your movie week then you will probably love this new Avatar featurette. It’s 4 minutes long and it contains LOTS of new footage (if you want to stay pure until December I would avoid this), along with interviews and sound-bites from James Cameron, Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver.

The scope and scale of this movie is huge!

The marketing will soon kick in and we will get even more footage, the only problem with that is I don’t want to be too spoiled before it’s release in 2 months. If you watch every trailer and TV spot you will become saturated with the imagery and it won’t be as special when you see it on the big screen. When the marketing blitz arrives I will post some stuff, but not everything.

What are your thoughts on the featurette? Should they show more of these or should they keep their Avatarholes shut for the next few months?

Got anything planned for the next 30 minutes? No? Good, because you’ll probably end up watching this new trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar on repeat for the foreseeable future. The only word to describe it would be ‘epic’. Watch below:

Here are the download links if you want to see it in HD!

480p

720p

1080p

What are your thought on the new trailer?

Spoiler TV were sent six super hi-resolution images from James Cameron’s Avatar. I’ve seen a few of the images floating around the net before, but they were scans from magazines and low quality. These, however, are big enough to have as a your desktop wallpaper. The image above shows Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) asking Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) how he likes his eco-friendly space coffee.

Click here to see more images, including a shot of Sigourney Weaver sitting with Joel Moore and Worthington in a lab, while Michelle Rodriguez stands behind them looking all tough.

Avatar began filming in April 2007 and now we finally have a glimpse of what James Cameron has been working on for the past 2 years. Due to all the special effects work that needs to be done in post-production Cameron and 20th Century Fox haven’t released anything from the film until recently. All we’ve had for the past 2 years are quotes from the actors and people involved, hyping the film up to a level that has never been seen before. James Cameron even said that he fears the hype may kill it. However, we now have a teaser trailer so we can judge for ourselves. Watch below!

I watched it with an open mind and wasn’t expecting to see the ‘greatest movie ever’ like some of the hype suggests. The close up shots of the Na’vi are amazing, and I don’t think some people will take in that 60% of what we see is CGI. Those lucky enough to get tickets for 16 minutes of Avatar footage tomorrow (including myself) will be able to get a bigger picture of what we are actually seeing.

What do you think of the Avatar trailer? Does it meet expectations? Does it blow your mind?

In a matter of hours the countdown on Apple Trailers will reach zero and we will be rewarded with a brand new trailer for Avatar. To get everyone warmed up 20th Century Fox have released 6 new images featuring Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Lang and Michelle Rodriguez in character. We also have the image above which shows a swarm of war aircraft.

Click here to see the rest, and come back in a few hours to see the trailer!