James Cameron has finally broken his self-imposed silence to talk up his epic new project, Avatar.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that the part-animation, part-live action flick will be utilising an impressive array of new technology that, according to the director, has culminated in "the most challenging film I've ever made".
When completed, Cameron expects Avatar to be about 60% CG animation, based on characters created using a newly developed performance capture-based process, and 40% live action, with a lot of VFX in the imagery.
The story concerns a band of humans who travel to a distant planet and get involved with all manner of sci-fi smackdowns and, despite the computer-driven visuals, Cameron insists that the story will be a compelling one.
"You have to make a good film that would be a good film under any circumstances," he said. "You have to put the narrative first. The reality is no matter how many (3-D) screens we get, you are still going to have a large number of people - possibly the majority of people - who see the film in a 2-D environment."
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Avatar, which is set for a December 2009 release, will star Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Michelle Rodriguez and Zoe Saldana.