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It looks as if director James Cameron isn’t content to have made the two highest grossing movies of all time. Now he’s aiming to enter the literary world as well. Cameron announced Tuesday night that he’s planning to turn his Oscar-nominated box office hit Avatar into a novel.
Cameron says bringing the tale of planet Pandora and its alien inhabitants to the page seemed like the natural next step, since he’ll be able to share characters’ internal monologues. Otherwise, it will follow the movie’s plot “quite closely," he says.
Although this will be Cameron’s first stab at a book, he’s been whetting his writing whistle with screenplays throughout his career (he’s drafted The Terminator, Titanic and Avatar, along with several others). “I don’t think Jim has ever written a novel before, but his first step of writing a script is often in a novella format,” Jon Landau, Cameron’s co-producer on Avatar, told MTV.com. “So this is just expanding that, and I think that he’ll be very adept at it.”
Avatar in book form could be coming to a bookstore near you as soon as late 2010.
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Sigh...
Please explain how the novel is a "prequel" when both your blurb and the linked article indicate the story will closely follow the movie's plot.
Really, do you guys proofread/edit at all? Where do I send my resume?
Hey firewhale,
Although the story we link to doesn't specifically mention that the book will be a prequel, it's been pretty widely reported. Here's one of many other stories that discusses it:
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1631859/story.jhtml
Thanks for reading.
Fair enough. I stand corrected on your title being accurate, and I look appropriately stupid for not searching the web to confirm the basis for my argument. I apologize to Anna Swindle for the snark. But there still is a disconnect between the title and the content of your post, i.e., no mention of the prequel elements in the body text. This appears to have originated in the linked WSJ article, but why propagate misinformation?
Nonetheless, thanks for posting the article. I won't buy the book, but it will be interesting to see if Cameron can transcend others' criticisms that while visually compelling, his story had nothing new to tell and was based on a foundation of cliched characters and a tired plot. After seeing it twice, I'm on the fence as to whether the stunning, immersive world compensates for the less impressive script.