James Cameron chats about how close he came to making Spider-Man, along with the possibility of Terminator 2 in 3D.
With physical production edging ever closer on his three planned Avatarsequels, writer/director James Cameron took some time out over the weekend to head to the Hero Complex Film Festival in the US. And while he was there, he was asked whether plans were afoot to release either of his Terminatormovies in 3D.
Cameron pretty much ruled out doing anything with the first film. "You could upgrade it to 3D but it’s still pretty gritty, available light photography, low budget filmmaking. We’d spend more converting it to 3D than we spent on the movie. That feels a little imbalanced to me", he told the crowd.
But Terminator 2? Cameron argues that it's a "more polished film", adding that "it’s never been on screens in China which in the next few years is about to become the biggest market for films worldwide. That alone might justify the cost of a conversion which might be 6 or 7 million dollars. And then a 3D re-release might attract some eyeballs in North American and Europe and then the Chinese release, which would be the first release on the big screen, might pay for it.
Cameron went on to say that this is some distance away from saying it's happening, but instead that "we're looking at it".
He then discussed his aborted plan to bring Spider-Man to the big screen, some time before Sony snapped up the rights and pressed ahead with Sam Raimi's original trilogy. "I was going to launch that as a series of films. I wrote quite an extensive treatment – I think 80 or 90 pages long" he said, having persuaded Carolco to buy up the rights.
However, Carolco went to the wall - as we talked about here - and when the rights became available, Cameron was well into making Titanic. As such, Sony moved in, and Cameron's Spider-Manfilms were never to be.
The first of James Cameron's Avatar sequels in due in cinemas at the end of 2016.
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