20 IT WAS BANNED IN CHINA
Avatar made gobs of money both domestically and internationally. The film was extremely popular among audiences around the world, especially in China where it became the highest earning film in the country’s history. But as the movie grew in popularity, the state-run movie distributor China Film Group pulled the 2-D version from 1628 screens and replaced it with a biopic about Confucius starring Chow-Yun Fat, according to the LA Times.
While the 2-D version of Avatar was pulled from 1628 screens, the 3-D version was still available to watch in theaters.
Apparently, Avatar did a little too well at the box office and CFG thought it was taking away attention from Chinese-produced titles. Others speculated that Avatar's central message about dislocation might have made the government nervous, given the comparisons one could draw between that and China’s own policy of forced evictions in the face of high rise condo projects.
19 IT HEAVILY INFLUENCED LUC BESSON
Luc Besson had been trying to adapt the French comic from his childhood, Valérian and Laureline, for a while. The series featured a pair of Spatio-Temporal agents who try to maintain order in the present, past, and future. The series is set against an incredibly diverse background of planets, races, and environments. It was expected to be an astonishing feat of filmmaking when Besson got it off the ground in 2017. Turns out, the film could’ve looked much different if Avatar hadn’t come out first.
Given Avatar's stunning achievements in CGI and special effects, Besson admitted to Deadline in 2017 that once he saw Avatar, he returned home and threw out the script he’d written for Valerian because the available technology changed his scope so drastically.
18 SPACE GHOST CAME OUT OF RETIREMENT TO HELP PROMOTE THE FILM
Another unique aspect of the film’s promotion included a tongue-in-cheek appearance by Zoe Saldana on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. The show featured the animated character coming out of retirement to host a special show interviewing Saldana, which would play up the film’s animated/live action combination.
Space Ghost was initially created as a crime-fighting animated hero by Hanna-Barbara productions. However, he was brought back to host a fictional talk show on Adult Swim, which ran for 10 seasons before going off the air in 2008. Adult Swim would revise the series here and there, with special promotional interviews with stars like Zoe Saldana and Jack Black.
17 SAM WORTHINGTON WAS LIVING IN HIS CAR WHEN HE AUDITIONED
The “rags-to-riches” character trope has been popular since Cinderella danced her way up the social ladder. Audiences aren’t tired of hearing about their favorite stars making it big after facing hardships and Sam Worthington is no exception. He started out as a bricklayer in Australia before establishing a decent acting career in his home country.
While Sam may have been a popular actor in Australia, he didn't have a lot of success when he made his way to America.
Despite starring in some high-profile films and nabbing an audition to play the new James Bond in Casino Royale, he fell on some difficult times when he moved to America. In an interview with Times of India, he talked about selling all of his belongings to live a car he bought with the proceeds. This was right around the time he got a call to audition for James’ Cameron’s new sci-fi feature and the rest is history.
16 PAUL FROMMER CREATED THE NA'VI LANGUAGE FROM SCRATCH
“Conlanging” is a phrase you probably haven’t heard but we guarantee you’ve been exposed to it. It’s the practice of language creation and it’s been widely employed by genre creators for ages. J.R.R. Tolkien was a conlanger and created the Elvish language before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was created to serve as background history for the language he was creating, but it grew into something more.
Marc Okrand created the Klingon language used in Star Trek and David J. Peterson created Dothraki and High Valyrian for Game of Thrones. In similar fashion, James Cameron tapped conlanger and USC communications professor Paul Frommer to create the entire Na’vi language. Frommer told Vanity Fair that he hoped that it would gain the traction that Okrand’s creation did.
