Sci-Fi Storm

AMC announced during their TCA presentation this week that they have ordered six one-hour episodes of a documentary series on the history of science fiction from James Cameron, to air sometimes in 2018.

James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction will have each episode asking one of the “Big Questions” that humanity faced all through history, and looks at how science fiction has attempted to answer those questions and steer humanity into the future.

“When I was a kid, I basically read any book with a spaceship on the cover and I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey many, many times,” Cameron said. “The movie inspired me to become a filmmaker. I liked the special effects, but I really loved the ideas and the questions behind them: How will the world end? Will technology destroy us? What does it mean to be human?”

The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle will consult on the series.

James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction will be produced by Left/Right, and executive produced by Cameron, Maria Wilhelm, Ken Druckerman and Banks Tarver.

Make a lot of money on a movie, and everyone claims they came up with it. Make a bomb, and it’s all yours.

James Cameron is getting sued again over the profits from Avatar, and the most recent claimant according to TMZ is Bryant Moore, a science fiction writer, who alleges that Cameron stole ideas from two of his unproduced scripts, “Aquatica” and “Descendants: The Pollination”. According to TMZ, some of the similarities between his scripts and Avatar are “bioluminescent flora/plant life, unbreathable atmospheres, matriarch support of hero vs. heroine, spiritual connections to environment and reincarnation, appearance of mist in scene, sunlight to moonlight, crackling from gargantuan foliage, blue skin/green skin and battle scene on limbs/branches.”

Umm…wow. Mist in a scene? Really? Green skin was his idea? Hide the Orion slave girls…

Despite a lot of excitement that he was in discussions with producers Jon Landau and James Cameron on a remake of Fantastic Voyage, Bourne trilogy director Paul Greengrass has opted to focus on a Treasure Island project for Lionel Wigram (Sherlock Holmes) instead.