WHICH VERSION OF AVATAR WILL YOU CHOOSE?

Digital technology may allow film directors to borrow a page from Broadway stage directors, who sometimes tweak scripts and alter staging after a play opens and critical judgments are rendered. That became apparent following the release of an interview with James Cameron that appeared on Entertainment Weekly‘s website on Monday. Cameron indicated that not only will the August 27 re-release of Avatar contain nine minutes of "cool stuff" that did not appear in the original release, but that an upcoming DVD will incorporate even more scenes that originally ended up on what used to be called "the cutting room floor" until digital filmmaking came along. Asked which is the official "director’s cut" of the movie, Cameron replied: "This re-release is a limited special edition. It’s just an experience you can have with your family at the end of the summer. The last hurrah in theaters. People can watch the original release — it still exists indefinitely on DVD and Blu-ray — or they can watch this new one. We’re going to do an even longer version that will exist only on DVD. There are people who felt that they could have spent more time in Pandora. So we’re giving them that." Cameron has said that he hopes to release Avatar as a 3D home-video set, but it was not clear whether the extended version he referred to will wait for 3D players to become commonplace.