Avatar (2009 film) Avatar (2009 film) Avatar, marketed as James Cameron's Avatar, is a 2009 American epic science fiction film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron, and stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. The film is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the mineral unobtanium, a room-temperature superconductor. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi – a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The film's
Avatar (2009 film) with paintings and physical sculptures when Cameron felt that 3-D brush renderings were not capturing his vision, often working together in the kitchen of Cameron's Malibu home. In , Cameron announced that he would film "Avatar" for a mid-2008 release and planned to begin principal photography with an established cast by . The following August, the visual effects studio Weta Digital signed on to help Cameron produce "Avatar". Stan Winston, who had collaborated with Cameron in the past, joined "Avatar" to help with the film's designs. Production design for the film took several years. The film had two different production