As Avatar Day approaches, fans crash site in pursuit of screening tickets

James Cameron’s 14-year endeavor, Avatar, is finally coming to the big screen. Much to the chagrin of adoring fans anticipating it’s arrival, a 3-D, 16-minute sneak peak is scheduled to screen at select IMAX locations across the nation on August 21, 2009, also known as Avatar Day. The tickets to the showing were available online on August 17, 2009 at the official Avatar website but so many fans bombarded the site that the server went down for several hours.

 The site was up again later that afternoon and tickets were distributed. All Miami IMAX locations were completely sold out leaving the only tickets available in Florida in Fort Myers, Jacksonville and Orlando.

The screening was one part of the mass promotion for Avatar Day. The official worldwide release of Avatar trailer online will also coincide on that day along with the releases of the 3-D/lenticular film posters, Ubisoft’s video game, Cameron’s Avatar: The Game, and Mattel will reveal the Avatar action figures that will go on sale 2 months prior to the film’s release date on December 18, 2009.

James Cameron is the writer and director of Avatar, though he is known to most of the world as the creative genius behind box office phenomenon, Titanic. He originally conceptualized the film 14 years ago and planned to release it shortly after Titanic but changed his mind, citing that the special effects of the time were not up to par to visualize his concept for the film. Cameron began production on Avatar 4 years ago.

This reason alone has propelled the massive interest in this film. As many recall, Titanic won an Oscar in 1998 for Best Visual Effects and many want to see this film solely to see if Cameron can top Titanic’s visual prowess, especially since this is Cameron’s first full-length feature film since Titanic’s release in 1997.