AVATAR - won the 82nd oskar in 2010

Avatar is a 2009 American, science fiction, epic film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez and Stephen Lang. The film is set in the year 2154, when humans are mining a precious mineral called unobtanium on the lush moon Pandora in the Alpha Centauri star system. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi—a sentient humanoid species which is indigenous to Pandora. The film's title refers to the genetically engineered Na'vi bodies used by several human characters to interact with the natives of Pandora.


In 1994, director James Cameron wrote a 80-page scriptment for Avatar, reportedly in just two weeks. In August 1996, Cameron announced that after completing Titanic, he would film Avatar, which would make use of synthetic, or computer-generated, actors. The project would cost $100 million and involve at least six actors in leading roles "who appear to be real but do not exist in the physical world". Visual effects house Digital Domain, with whom Cameron has a partnership, joined the project, which was supposed to begin production in the summer of 1997 for a 1999 release. However, Cameron felt that the technology had not caught up with the story and vision that he intended to tell. He decided to concentrate on making documentaries and refining the technology for the next few years.

In June 2005, Cameron was announced to be working on a project tentatively titled Project 880, concurrently with another project, Battle Angel. It was later revealed in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story that 20th Century Fox had fronted $10 million to Cameron to film a proof-of-concept clip for Avatar, which he showed to Fox execs in October 2005. By December, Cameron said that he planned to film Battle Angel first for a mid 2007 release, and to film Project 880 for a 2009 release. In February 2006, Cameron said he had switched goals for the two film projects – Project 880 was now scheduled for 2007 and Battle Angel for 2009. He indicated that the release of Project 880 would possibly be delayed until 2008.

Later that February, Cameron revealed that Project 880 was "a retooled version of Avatar", a film that he had tried to make years earlier, citing the technological
advances in the creation of the computer-generated characters Gollum, King Kong and Davy Jones. Cameron had chosen Avatar over Battle Angel after completing a five-day camera test in the previous year.