James Cameron had an absolutely savage response to a studio executive who begged him to cut down the runtime of Avatar.
The legendary director has opened up about the process of bringing his famous 2009 artwork to fruition and it sounds like he had a bit of pushback from the studio.
Speaking to GQ, Cameron explained how an unnamed executive at Fox wasn't too kind to him after seeing a pre-screening version of the movie.
Advert
The director says this employee 'will go unnamed, because this is a really negative review' and told him to cut down the length of the movie because they thought it was way too long.
The final version of the movie ended up being two hours and 42 minutes, so it's certainly not a film for those who get restless.
He told GQ: “I said something I’ve never said to anybody else in the business."
Advert
Cameron recalled saying: "I think this movie is going to make all the f**king money. And when it does, it’s going to be too late for you to love the film. The time for you to love the movie is today.
"So I’m not asking you to say something that you don’t feel, but just know that I will always know that no matter how complimentary you are about the movie in the future when it makes all the money’—and that’s exactly what I said, in caps, ALL THE MONEY, not some of the money, all the f**king money."
Wow, we told you it was savage.
Cameron told this executive that they weren't allowed to 'come back to me and compliment the film' or try to claim it was a collaborative effort between him and Fox.
The director added: "At that point, that particular studio executive flipped out and went bug s**t on me. And I told him to get the f**k out of my office. And that’s where it was left.”
Advert
But if you thought the original Avatar movie was long, wait until you feast your eyes on the sequel.
It's shaping up to be a little more than three hours and Cameron doesn't care if you think that's lengthy.
Cameron told Total Film: “The goal is to tell an extremely compelling story on an emotional basis.”
He continued: “I would say the emphasis in the new film is more on character, more on story, more on relationships, more on emotion.
Advert
“We didn’t spend as much time on relationship and emotion in the first film as we do in the second film, and it’s a longer film, because there’s more characters to service.
"There’s more story to service.”
Avatar: The Way of Water will drop on December 15 in some countries and December 16 in the United States.
Topics: James Cameron, Film and TV
Stewart Perrie