Avatar

Mel Gibson still has his fans, but after a long and controversial absence from the big screen, his overall appeal seems to have faded. The thriller "Edge of Darkness," which marked Gibson's first lead role since 2002's "Signs," opened to a fine but not fantastic $17.1 million from Friday through Sunday in the U.S. and Canada, according to an estimate from distributor Warner Bros. It easily outperformed Walt Disney Studios' romantic comedy "When in Rome," the weekend's other new movie, but "Avatar," with $30 million, held the No. 1 spot for the seventh weekend in a row. Opening-weekend ticket sales for "Edge of Darkness" were the lowest for any movie starring Gibson since 1995's "Braveheart," despite ongoing increases in ticket prices.

Inside a dark mixing stage at 20th Century Fox a few weeks ago, writer-director James Cameron, surrounded by nearly a dozen colleagues, stared at a clip from his upcoming movie, "Avatar," unhappy with the look of the precipitous peaks on the horizon. Circling the summits with a red laser pointer and speaking to his computer-effects team at Weta Digital in New Zealand via videoconference, Cameron came up with a Muhammad-like solution: Shift the mountains to the left. "Moving a mountain," the 55-year-old filmmaker said, laughing, "is nothing."

It's the most expensive movie in Hollywood history -- a $310-million epic that's also poised to become the highest-grossing global release ever -- but James Cameron's technologically groundbreaking "Avatar" had failed to prove itself as an award season favorite. That changed Sunday night, when the writer-director's futuristic 3-D thriller won the best drama Golden Globe. In honoring movies as populist and American as any recently recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. -- among mainstream U.S. hits, the bachelor party disaster "The Hangover" was named best comedy or musical and "The Blind Side's" football fanatic Sandra Bullock won for best dramatic actress -- trophies were split among several Oscar front-runners, with no movie winning more than two trophies.

The nominees in the feature film category of the 24th annual American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Awards announced Monday have a distinctly international flavor. The lone American -- Robert Richardson for "Inglourious Basterds" -- is joined by Briton Barry Ackroyd, who is nominated for "The Hurt Locker"; Aussie Dion Beebe, for "Nine"; Mauro Fiore of Italy, for "Avatar"; and Austrian Christian Berger for "The White Ribbon," the only black-and-white film in the group.

It's bad enough that animation, action, fantasy and horror have been hijacked by 3-D mania. But the ground shifted for me when Werner Herzog's breathtaking documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," a Zen meditation on ancient cave paintings and peoples, came with a bulky pair of 3-D glasses and a bloated ticket price. What I didn't get was a better moviegoing experience. The artistry of black brush strokes on cold stone brought those stampeding horses to life, not the legacy of a thousand greasy fingerprints I was forced to gaze through.

With more than $240 million in production costs alone riding on the highly anticipated James Cameron-directed film, 20th Century Fox is making a big change to Hollywood's sneak-preview tradition for "Avatar." Four months before the digital 3-D movie debuts, Fox is working with giant-size movie screen company Imax to show 16 minutes of it Aug. 21 in more than 100 theaters, about 70 of which are in the United States. The unprecedented promotion signals just how aggressively Fox is pushing its massive event film and how Imax is trying to position its theaters as consumers' first-choice destination for "Avatar."

If you think your boss is intimidating, imagine how Alister Grierson feels. The Australian filmmaker, who made his new movie, "Sanctum," under the guiding hand of "Avatar" creator James Cameron, had to present a finished cut to the famously exacting director in Cameron's Malibu home theater. "Every time he'd twitch, I wondered, 'Oh no, what did I do wrong?'" recalled Grierson, 41, who had previously directed only one other movie, a small Australian war picture. "It was like sitting with God at the pearly gates watching your entire life.

When director James Cameron wanted to give fans a glimpse of his 3-D epic "Avatar" last summer, he opted to show the first 15 minutes of the sci-fi film in big-screen Imax theaters in the U.S. and Canada. "We thought it was the perfect way to introduce the movie to the public," said "Avatar" producer Jon Landau, chief operating officer of Cameron's production company, Lightstorm Entertainment. "We wanted 'Avatar' to be an immersive experience, and really, there's nothing more immersive than the Imax screen."

The $1.5 billion Paramount Park in Spain hopes to rival Disneyland Paris as a European tourist destination when the movie theme park debuts in spring 2015. > Photos: Paramount Park Murcia theme park in Spain Located on the Mediterranean coast about 270 miles southeast of Madrid, Paramount Park Murcia will feature 30 attractions with an adjacent shopping center, hotels and casino. Construction is expected to begin in spring 2012 on a 100-acre theme park set around a central lake that will combine the themed lands of Disneyland with the movie backlots of Universal Studios . While not an investor, Paramount Pictures will license movie properties to the developer and provide design direction for the theme park.

James Cameron has begun to think about life after his two "Avatar" sequels -- and it includes making a movie from a female-driven novel called "The Informationist. " Cameron's production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, has optioned the rights to the debut book by Taylor Stevens, with plans for Cameron to direct it for 20th Century Fox, Lightstorm announced Tuesday. A thriller set in Africa, "The Informationist" follows Vanessa Munroe, a researcher hired to help find the missing daughter of a Texas oil billionaire.