Avatar: The Way Of Water is one of 'most logistically complicated' titles ever with 1,065 full-feature versions

Virgin Radio

24 Apr 2023, 16:02

Groundbreaking movie Avatar: The Way Of Water has a jaw-dropping 1,065 versions of itself and involved a scale no studio has ever attempted before. Making more than $2.3bn globally at the box office, the 20th Century Studios blockbuster has smashed records since its release in December 2022.

Kim Beresford, The Walt Disney Studios’ vice president of planning and motion picture operations, explained about its momentous creation: “The type of experience that Jon [Landau, producer] and Jim [Cameron] wanted the audience to have was partly about the best 3D version, partly about being able to fill the screen — whatever type of screen is at your local cinema — and partly to get the brightest amount of light onto screen based on what each projector could handle. It was all to have the audience really feel immersed. Those were the guiding principles.”

She continued: “The first idea of a plan we had was 3,000 versions. But when we looked at the potential capability that exhibition might have, it turned out we didn’t need all those. Not every exhibitor can play everything in the way we thought they could, not all markets or versions were required. So we ended at 1,065 full-feature versions. By contrast, a typical Marvel blockbuster has around 500 versions.“

"While huge, the 1,065 number might not have presented so much of a challenge but we were also dealing with a huge increase in data,” said Rich Welsh, senior vice president of innovation at Deluxe. “The more data you have to move, the more time it will take.”

“We had to manufacture more time,” said Mark Arana, vice president of distribution technology at The Walt Disney Studios, at an HPA event. “Since all the data was at Park Road Post Production in New Zealand, our main operations are on the US west coast and our vendors were mainly in Europe, as was our dubbing facility, we had to turn our operation into a 24/7 support model. Moving to a cloud-based workflow enabled everybody to receive content on time.”

Disney’s Beresford admitted: “The thing I am most proud of is the level of collaboration and innovation that everyone brought to the table."

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