The Earth Day release of Avatar generated plenty of green: James Cameron's sci-fi epic quickly surpassed The Dark Knight as the best-selling Blu-ray disc of all time, moving 2.7 million units in less than a week.
The director said he's not worried about the 2-D home version living up to the in-theater experience.
"If you put 400 people in your living room, you can replicate the theater experience, so you might not want to do that," Cameron told Wired.com in a phone interview. "As a home entertainment experience, it's spectacular. Star Wars did the same thing: It went from a 50-foot screen to a 50-inch screen."
Cameron, who supervised the Blu-ray mastering with the colorist who worked on the theatrical release, said the bare-bones package that hit stores last week will be followed by deluxe versions.
"There will be a multidisc box set for the holidays that has behind-the-scenes documentaries, a lot of stuff with design and visual effects," he said. "You're going to be able to program what you want to watch – do you want to see the released version or the 30-minute-longer version? That sort of thing."
While Cameron is still promoting Avatar, which has grossed more than $2.7 billion globally, he's also been involved in a plethora of other activities.
Within the past two months, Cameron has been to the Amazon twice. He just returned to the United States with Lt. Ellen Ripley and Dr. Grace Augustine herself, Sigourney Weaver.
"I've found myself in almost a real-life Avatar situation," Cameron said of his trips to Brazil.
The director is rallying opposition to the building of the Belo Monte dam, a construction project that would negatively affect various tribes along the Xingu River due to flooding. He's also working with the Earth Day Network alongside producer Jon Landau to plant 1 million trees across the globe. Cameron said his activism is a way of "connecting the dots" between the film's message and real environmental struggles.
Cameron explored environmental themes in The Terminator – with its ideas about nuclear proliferation – and even The Abyss, but Avatar's message is the most eco-friendly, and the director said activism has been more of a focus for him in the past few years.
"The issues are a lot more urgent than even I thought they were," Cameron said. "It's changed from mild activism to being much more a part of my daily diet."
Still, Cameron is taking on another movie project – an underwater cave-diving 3-D thriller entitled Sanctum. He called the film's Australian director Alister Grierson who previously made the well-received Kokoda, "the real deal." Andrew Wight, who co-wrote Sanctum, worked previously with Cameron on Ghosts of the Abyss.
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