James Cameron's 'Avatar' Budget Could Have Saved Starving Children In Africa

The budget to James Cameron's long-gestating sci-fi epic, "Avatar" cost a bundle of money, though not quite as much as first reported.

When Time magazine first wrote about the film, they said the budget was in excess of $300 million dollar which would make it the most expensive movie ever made and bloggers jumped on this with lots of exclamation points. However, Time has made an error and adjusted their report. "The original version of this story misstated the cost of the film Avatar as being in excess of $300 million. The correct figure is in excess of $200 million."

Regardless, $200 million plus is nothing to sneeze at -- isn't that like the GNP of Canada?

In an article about the future of 3D digital filmmaking, Time says "Avatar" is poised to revolutionize moviemaking and Steven Spielberg predicts the film will be "the biggest 3-D live-action film ever."

Apparently Cameron had the idea in 1995, but realized the technology wasn't advanced yet. "We can't do this," he recalled his crew saying. "We'll die." Apparently he's been creating state-of-the-art motion capture cameras ever since.

Time writer Josh Quittner saw some of the footage and noted that while everything was digitally reproduced (trees, backgrounds, fauna, etc.), "I couldn't tell what was real and what was animated--even knowing that the 9-ft.-tall blue, dappled dude couldn't possibly be real. The scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if were real."

Sounds impressive and it all actually makes us semi-anticipate the film and Cameron could achieve the impossible: make potential believers out of us.