Entertainment Editor Takes A Look at AVATAR - 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 on Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. Humans are engaged in mining Pandora's reserves of a precious mineral, called unobtanium, while the Na'vi-a race of indigenous humanoids-resist the colonists' expansion, which threatens the continued existence of the Na'vi and the Pandoran ecosystem. The film's title refers to the genetically engineered Na'vi bodies used by a few of the film's human characters to interact with the Na'vi. Development on Avatar began in 1994, when Cameron wrote an 80-page scriptment for the film. Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Titanic, for a planned release in 1999, but according to Cameron, the technology was not yet available to portray his vision of the film. Work on the language for the film's extraterrestrial race began in summer 2005, and Cameron began developing the script and fictional universe in early 2006. The film was released in traditional 2-D, as well as 3-D, RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, and IMAX 3D formats. Avatar is officially budgeted at $237 million; other estimates put the cost at $280-310 million to produce and $150 million for marketing. The film is being touted as a breakthrough in terms of filmmaking technology, for its development of 3D viewing and stereoscopic filmmaking with cameras that were specially designed for the film's production. Avatar premiered in London, UK on December 10, 2009, and was released on December 18, 2009 in the U.S. and Canada to critical acclaim and commercial success. It grossed $27 million on its opening day domestically (in the United States and Canada) and $77 million domestically[ on its opening weekend. It opened two days earlier internationally and grossed $232 million worldwide in its first five days of international release. Within three weeks of its release, with a worldwide gross of over $1 billion, Avatar became the second highest-grossing film of all time worldwide, exceeded only by Cameron's previous film Titanic. In response to the film's financial success, Cameron confirmed the possibility of two sequels.