Get set for Avatar The Theme-Park Ride. The Walt Disney Co. announced on Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with director James Cameron, his producing partner Jon Landau, and 20th Century Fox to develop a theme-park ride based on Cameron's movie at Disney's Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. Work on the project is expected to begin in 2013, with an expected opening in 2016. And if you thought the $250-million budget of the movie was expensive, it will seem like nothing compared with the jaw-dropping $500 million that the Avatar ride is expected to cost. In an interview with today's (Wednesday) Los Angeles Times, Cameron said that he is already tossing ideas around with Disney's Imagineering staff. He said he has been "looking at all the technologies that they have developed that they're champing at the bit to use to bring Pandora to life _ the creatures ... culture, a general sense of the future, the overall human relationship to nature, which fits thematically so well with the Animal Kingdom." The Times said that Disney is also considering bringing " Avatar- themed attractions" to Disney theme parks in Paris and Hong Kong.

21/09/2011