What does Titanic, Dick Tracy, and MMOs have in common? Jon Landau and James Cameron. No, they're not going to be doing a Titanic MMO (almost everyone dies in the end anyway), they signed up to be the advisory board for Multiverse, a MMO game network. There are even rumors circulating about a film/MMO tie up, but no official word so far.

From Jon himself: "It turns out films and MMOs are not that different,. That shouldn't be too surprising, though. After all, what we do as filmmakers is create virtual worlds...Both our industries build experiences that have the same goals."

According to the article, doing games and creating movies is an inevitable intersection. A virtual movie set would let the director film an actor and see what special effects he'd like to see in the scene--just like a game. That way, the director would be able to add or delete parts of the expensive effects even before the camera starts rolling.

Combining existing technologies would allow them this degree of freedom and creativity. The article also says that it'll help both industries regarding resources, especially financial. Movies to game adaptations can be much easier. The movie people can share some of their movie clips and other animations in the movie.

Jon said that audiences these days have much more higher expectations when it comes to their movies or games. The film industry is challenged by how an MMO keep its audiences and make them want more. He added that the virtual world should influence the movie, let it feed back into the process and provide riches and depth. However, MMOs won't replace great directing or flimaking, but rather the ones who create those games may become the next generation of directors or writers.

Nine years since the release of his big-budget blockbuster film, Titanic, film director James Cameron is still working on his upcoming sci-fi epic, "Project 880" - right along with the MMO game tie-in. Gradually, some information has begun coming out about the plot and characters.

Over the past several months, there have been conflicting reports on the nature, as well as the title, of the upcoming project. Last year, Cameron said the movie/game crossover would be called Battle Angel, based on a Japanese manga series entitled Battle Angel Alita. The manga series is set on a post-apocalyptic planet in the near future.

Now, Hollywood scuttlebutt has it that "Project 880" is actually Avatar, a project that Cameron has been nurturing for the past ten years. Hollywood insiders who claim to have read anything describe it as a "wildly ambitious sci-fi epic about a love story set against an interplanetary war," between Terrans and inhabitants of a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri known as the "Na'vi."

The story apparently centers around Jake, an "angry but highly intelligent and creative twenty-something who is scarred emotionally and physically by a great tragedy." His life is changed when he becomes intimately involved with Neytiri, a "Na'vi female who looks like an exotic human female in her 20s and is lithe as a cat."

Excuse me...but haven't we seen this one already? No doubt, these roles were made for Leonardo and Kate...