James Cameron poised to make Fantastic Voyage

20th Century Fox is moving forward with plans to remake 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage, with James Cameron on board as producer and pensmith Shane Salerno (Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem) tasked with adapting the original.

Fox has yet to appoint a director for the project. According to Variety, Roland Emmerich was linked to the film before he went off to helm 2012. Rumours suggest Tarsem Singh (The Fall) might be a candidate to take the controls.

Cameron's Fantastic Voyage will use the same "pricey 3-D and digital technology" which he deployed on Avatar. So pricey was the tech that an Avatar sequel may well be in the offing, as Fox attempts to recoup its up-front investment.

Talking to reporters at the London premiere of Avatar yesterday, Cameron said: “When I pitched it to Fox, they said, ‘We’ve spent a lot of money creating all these assets, all these CG mountains, plants, trees, leaves, flowers, bugs’ - everything you saw up there on screen had been made by people at workstations over a period of years and so they have value.

“So in terms of the pitch it was: OK, you’ve spent a lot of money on the first one; on the second one we’ll be able to amortize it and focus on the story and all that... and they bought that.”

The original Fantastic Voyage starred Stephen Boyd, Donald Pleasence and Raquel Welch. The latter will presumably be digitally recreated should Cameron fail to find an actress who can match her impressive screen credentials. ®