James Cameron has revealed he spent “a few days” in the rainforest during the making of Avatar 2.
In an interview with Variety, Cameron said that he took the cast of the sci-fi blockbuster into the rainforests of Hawaii so they would get a hands-on experience that would lend credence to their roles in the film.
“I took the actors on what I called a sense-memory odyssey. We went to Kauai. We lived in the rainforest for a few days,” Cameron explained.
“We cooked in underground fire pits. We drank water from the leaves.”
He added: “I said, ‘All right, we’re going to walk up a trail and I want you to observe as much as you can about how you place your feet, how you place your hands when you go up a steep section. You’re going to have to remember it, what it felt like, what it smelled like, and you’re going to have to bring it back into a relatively sterile environment.’
“We all just embarked on that journey.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Cameron admitted that the sequel to his 2009 film Avatar 2 needs to “make a lot of money”.
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“The big issue is: Are we going to make any damn money? Big, expensive films have got to make a lot of money,” he said.
“We’re in a new world post-COVID, post-streaming. Maybe those numbers will never be seen again. Who knows? It’s all a big roll of the dice.”
He added that the flick, which stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, and more, allows his to merge his “two greatest loves” – directing and “ocean exploration”.
“It sounds kind of nuts, the process I mean, if Avatar hadn’t made so much damn money, we’d never do this – because it’s kind of crazy…
“I do the ocean thing when I’m not making movies. So if I could combine my two greatest loves – one of which is ocean exploration; the other, feature filmmaking – why wouldn’t I?”
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