James Cameron And Alien 5

Uber-director and self-styled 'king of the world', James Cameron, was at London's Science Museum last night to attend the premiere of his latest feature, the excellent 3D Titanic documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss. As the director recounted the difficulties of travelling 12,000 feet beneath the Atlantic to film the wreck of the former ocean liner, Empire Online took the opportunity to get the skinny on what the elusive director has in the pipeline. Rumours that Cameron may be re-visiting the the Alien franchise have proved to be well-founded; the project is definitely in the pipeline but anyone expecting to see another Aliens will be disappointed to hear that, while Cameron will be involved, he won't appear behind the camera. "We're definitely looking at another Alien film but that wouldn't be something I'd be directing," he told us. "I'm just going to be writing and producing that one." Another project on the boil is an adaptation of Anne Rice's book, Ramses The Damned (also titled The Mummy). While again not planning to direct, Cameron is keen to get the film off the ground, but only when the time is right. "We've been holding off because of the two Mummy films that Universal did. Although they're very different tonally, they are very much in the same area code in terms of the imagery you'd see." What he is planning to direct, however, is perhaps his most ambitious project to date (which is saying something considering that this is the man who re-built the Titanic). Cameron's next film will build on the experience gained working on Ghosts of the Abyss and be a full-length feature entirely in 3D. "The only thing I can really say about the film, which we're going to start next January, is that it's a big budget feature, it's going to be in 3D, it's going to have lots of action and stunts and visual effects and all that cool stuff. But that's it, I can't say any more." Apart from the obvious fact that shooting such a project would put even Titanic's budget to shame, there are a number of other difficulties, such as how to screen the film. "The trick is certainly going to be getting the theatres ready to show 3D. Right now an IMAX theatre like this is the best way to show 3D - it's the only way in the UK. In the US we've put in an additional 50 screens of 35mm 3D for this film. For the feature we're going to need maybe 500 or 1000 films so it's going to require a big retrofit of a lot of theatres to make that possible. That will be the biggest challenge, making the movie will almost be a secondary challenge to that." And if the film works out, could he be persuaded to bring the Alien franchise to us in three terror-inducing dimensions? "Maybe, but I wouldn't want that to be the first one because that's what they'd expect you to do because it's a horror film. I want to elevate the way we look at 3D and do a film that doesn't need to be done in 3D but do it in 3D anyway."