Ten most incredible facts about AVATAR

Avatar, the epic movie adventure by James Cameron, the director behind Titanic, is a project that has caused pop-culture ripples that have resulted in the greatest cult following seen, perhaps, since Star Wars.
Avatar has gained more attention by movie-goers than most movies that have come out lately, and a lot of people are like: “where did this movie come from?”. From the incredible storyline, to amazing visual effects, to a star-studded cast, Avatar blends the old, tried and true methods of movie making with the effects driven future to bring us a story unlike one that we have ever seen before. But, what you might not know about Avatar is how much went into making it.
It is not easy to make a movie like this, even for professionals and James Cameron knew what he was doing when he brought “Avatar” to life on the silver screen. Here are the ten most incredible facts about Avatar that you might not have known before. These facts might just blow your mind as much as the movie did the first time you saw it - well, almost as much!

1. James Cameron started work on Avatar back in 1995, but because of the technology that was available, he realized that it was not technically possible to do what he wanted to do. So, instead of making the movie with sub-quality effects, he basically threw it in the drawer and forgot about it! So, Avatar has been in the making for a long time - much longer than most people realize. It has been 15 years since the project was begun!
2. Avatar is actually not an animated film. While it might seem like any other animated film where the actors stood behind glass and just recorded voice, leaving animators to finish the work, Avatar was made in a very different way. There is a reason as to why the actions of the natives look so life-like and realistic, and that is because of these parts were played by the actors, and the bodies of the Avatars were built around this motion, making each performance different, and making the Avatars more like the actor than any regular animated character would be. So, this was very much a live-action film, with the actors playing every scene out in it’s entirety - it is just that animation has been built around the human movement to make them look like Avatars. 
3. In James Cameron’s Avatar, it was very important that the facial expressions of the animated characters be life-like. The makers of the movie realized that it was the facial expression of a character that makes a movie dramatic, makes you fall in love with the characters, and is where movies live and breath. The special effects technicians were able to come up with a way to capture actual human facial expressions as the scenes were filmed, and directly apply them to the animated body. Once this corner was rounded, James Cameron knew that he had a chance at making this movie a success.
4. In order to create the realistic environment you see reflected in the planet Pandora, real science was consulted, and in a sense, taken to the very reaches of science fiction. The designers who were working on the wildlife for Pandora said that they would have tables just stacked with books about real life nature. They studied real life animals, biology, and science to create the alien creatures you see in the film. So, in a sense, real nature was very much the inspiration behind many of the creatures in this movie. 
5. A number of live action locations were utilized for the shooting of Avatar. Among these locations were Hawaii, New Zealand, and California.
6. Avatar was filmed in stereoscopic 3-d, and utilized a new camera system called the Fusion camera system. This system was developed by Pace and Cameron, took seven years to fully create, and is now the most advanced system of it’s kind. 
7. James Cameron did not intentionally or initially have Sigourney Weaver in mind when he was writing the script for Avatar. He did work with her on Alien, and while he said he did not exclude her, he just did  not really think of her. He was looking at a lot of different actresses to play the part, but he ended up choosing her because she was such a strong actress. The two of them had not done a project together since 1986, and he believed that she would play the part beautifully!
8. It is difficult to exactly determine how much a movie like Avatar costs to make, but there have been a lot of numbers thrown out there. The estimates have ranged from $200 million, to $310 million! Add the marketing costs to a movie like this, and you are looking at a project that would need to wrangle at least $750 million to even make the money back! Luckily, Avatar is a good enough movie that this is probably not a problem.
9. While the movie was conceived and written back in 1995, it was shelved until 2005. It was then that James Cameron actually started to work on it.
10. Zoe Saldana, who played the part of the female native princess in the movie, says that the toughest part of making this movie, for her, was speaking English with a Nav’I accent. She said that this was even tougher than the martial arts, horseback riding, and fight sequences.

From BigTVFan