The ***Avatar *](Avatar (2009) - Movie | Moviefone)**panel just ended and the consensus on Twitter is that the footage was pretty breathtaking. Perhaps the biggest announcement for you folks who didn’t get a chance to attend today’s panel was that on August 21st, James Cameron will screen 15 minutes of *Avatar *in 3D at IMAX theaters worldwide … for free. Yup, we’ll all get a chance to see what all the hype is about a few months prior to the film’s official release date of December 18th.
Off the top of my head, I don’t know if anything like this has ever been done before. Sure there’s the occasional press event where footage will be screened and we’ll write it up afterwards (*Watchmen *and Star Trek both did this), but 20th Century Fox must have tons upon tons of faith in this film to go ahead and splurge on a worldwide screening of only 15 minutes of footage four and a half months prior to release. Whatever the case may be, I think it’s pretty awesome that we’ll get to taste this bad boy ahead of time – though on the other hand, part of me would rather wait to experience it as a whole.
What do you think? Will you be seeing the 15-minute preview or waiting for the official release?
We’ll have more from the *Avatar *panel later; in the meantime, check out the rest of our Comic Con coverage.