Mar 15 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Although it had been previously thought that the blockbuster Avatar was going to be re-released over the summer, it now appears that this isn’t quite the whole story. The new Avatar that is under consideration to be released in the summer of 2010, is a new Avatar, with additional footage added into this 3-D movie.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, James Cameron, the director of Avatar is currently in negotiations with Fox to work out a re-release of the film, and added some of the 40 minutes of additional footage Cameron had originally cut out. The footage had hit the cutting room floor due to the rush to make the December 18th deadline, and typical movie time limits(the IMAX theaters can take up to a 170 minute movie, whereas Avatar is 160 minutes long) according to IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond.

Apparently, Alice jumped through the rabbit hole a little too soon. The week before the 3D movie, Alice in Wonderland was released, Avatar was still doing quite well in 4200 American cinemas, which included 179 IMAX theaters. Avatar was taken out of theaters to make room for Alice since the release of the former movie meant an immediate drop of Avatar viewing in 667 of those theaters, 8 of the IMAX, and 41% profit loss. Jim Cameron spoke in New York last week and stated that Avatar had most likely “left a couple hundred million dollars on the table as a result”. So this summer, they may come back to get the money they lost.

In the meantime, IMAX, along with an Israeli company named “Cinema City” has been quietly building a large cinema group in Europe. They have around 700 screens, and 9 IMAX sites. According to Julian Standford, IMAX Corp’s GM/Theatre Development for the EMEA region, It is all down to the fact, and this is something they realized a while ago, that putting an IMAX into a cinema complex is like putting a strong department store or an IKEA into a shopping mall. It gives you a strong anchor tenant that people love. Just before Christmas they put one into Bucharest, in Romania, at a 20+ screen complex, and it looks fantastic and is shaped like a giant golfball, and has been doing fabulous business. What Cinema City has been able to do is to roll out the IMAX concept into their premiere sites in Warsaw, Bucharest, Prague and Budapest, and this has been a tremendous move for them, and us.”