Curtis on cloud nine over Avatar call-up
Lead role in all four sequels ‘dream come true’ for actor critikarl
Cliff Curtis has revealed he scored the biggest role of his career — a lead spot in James Cameron’s four Avatar sequels — without auditioning for the role.
The Kiwi actor was revealed as one of the leads for the four-movie series on Monday, playing a character called “Tonowari” — the leader of a group of reef people called Metkayina.
In an interview with Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB yesterday morning, Curtis revealed he didn’t have to audition for the role.
Instead, Cameron offered him the job on the spot during a Skype call.
“[I got] a phone call from James Cameron,” he said. “That turned into a Skype call and he offered me four movies. It was that simple. It was a straight invitation.”
Curtis, the star of local movies The Dark Horse and Once Were Warriors, called it “a highlight in my life and career”.
He said he was happy to finally leave “the grind” of being a struggling actor behind him.
“It’s a bit mind-bending. After years of struggling — you have to do all these meetings, auditions and chemistry reads — [there’s] none of that . . . he goes, ‘How’d you like to do four movies?’ ‘Oh yeah, sure Jim, that
Just to feel valued, as a fellow storyteller at that level, it’s huge, it’s really significant. Cliff Curtis
sounds great’. I always wanted to get to a point where it would come down to someone who knows my work, respects my work, who I get to know and respects my company, giving me a call,” Curtis said.
Filming on the four sequels is expected to begin early next year, with the first Avatar sequel planned for release in 2020 and the last in 2025.
Curtis will join returning cast members Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver on the shoot.
The first Avatar film, released in 2009, earned more than $3.9 billion at the global box office and remains the top grossing film of all time.
Curtis called Cameron’s out-of-theblue offer “a dream come true”.
“It’s James Cameron — he’s a genius . . . Just to feel valued, as a fellow storyteller at that level, it’s huge, it’s really significant.” Curtis admitted to Hosking he hadn’t yet received a shooting schedule and didn’t know much about how Cameron was going to make four films back-to-back.
“Technically I don’t understand how he’s going to do what he’s going to do . . . I’ve just got to turn up and make my humble contribution to the overall scheme of things.”
Curtis said his filming commitments on Avatar would work around his schedule on US zombie show Fear the Walking Dead, which is made in America.
But being able to make the movies at home was something he’d always dreamed of, Curtis said.
“The dream has always been to do it at home . . . It doesn’t get better than this mate.”
Cameron’s Avatar news comes amid a number of Avatar- themed announcements, including a theme park opening in Florida, while Cirque du Soleil’s Avatarinspired show Toruk will tour New Zealand later this year. more popular. It’s not hard to see why.
By increasingly adopting the qualities of fiction to their narratives the genre has become more accessible and digestible. It’s been happening for a long time. While some still play it straight, docos like Roger and Me, American Movie and Grizzly Man are just a few really great and early-ish examples of moviemaking techniques and tropes being pushed into and popularising the non-fiction genre.
There’s been some purist outrage about doco makers not letting the facts get in the way of their stories but audiences are lapping them up.
The fact that the New Zealand International Film Festival would decide to lead its first announcement of eight films with three local documentaries — including Florian Habicht’s Spookers — is testament to
These days it . . . feels that spectacle has almost entirely replaced story.
that. As is the fact that there’s three local movie-length documentaries to even lead with.
Not only that, in cinemas right now is Meat, a local doco about meat farming in New Zealand, and releasing next week is Pecking Order, another local documentary about, of all things, competitive chicken breeding in New Zealand.
There’s also the International Documentary Film Festival kicking off in June which, alongside the expected heavy topics, houses a couple of pleasingly quirky delights.
While there’s far too much money involved for the extravagant blockbuster to ever die, isn’t it an enjoyable twist that their biggest box office threat could well be these little, no budget, real-life movies?
Someone should really make a film about it.