"Titanic" director James Cameron talked to The Independent about his new feature "Avatar" and confirmed the film will "not be released until the summer of 2009".

In Avatar, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran is brought to another planet, the jungle-covered Pandora, which is inhabited by the humanoid race the Na'vi. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and the local culture.

"Avatar is a very ambitious sci-fi movie. It's an old-fashioned jungle adventure with an environmental conscience...[and] aspires to a mythic level of storytelling" says Cameron.

Talking about the technology involved, he says "The film requires me to create an entirely new alien culture and language, and for that I want 'photo-real' CGI characters. Sophisticated enough 'performance-capture' animation technology is only coming on stream now. I've spent the last 14 months doing performance-capture work - the actor performs the character and then we animate it".

The full interview can be found here.