With his “Avatar” franchise, filmmaker James Cameron has been one of the pioneers of 3D in cinema – those movies still to this day being the gold standard use of the technology.
In his time, he has also seen 3D conversions done of some of his past films – most notably “Titanic 3D” in 2012 in a conversion that cost $18 million and took over a year.
In 2017, a 4K scan of “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” landed a 3D conversion and again took around a year with over 1400 artists involved in the process.
Out promoting his new Billie Eilish 3D concert film, Cameron tells Letterboxd he’s considering doing the conversion for his 1986 feature “Aliens”:
“Aliens is a creature of its time. We are thinking about converting Aliens [to 3D], because I know now that the tools are so much better than they were for creating depth maps. We’re probably going to wind up converting Aliens, which will be a fun experience. That film seems to be evergreen. People still go back to it a lot. If people remember a movie that I did 38 years ago, I think I’ve already won [an] argument.”
The 1986 film remains a cornerstone of the sci-fi/action genre, one of the greatest films of the 1980s, and the pin-up of how to do a sequel right. It was followed by numerous sequels that never could catch the same level of quality again.
Cameron immediately followed that film with 1989’s “The Abyss” before going onto major success with “Terminator 2: Judgement Day,” “True Lies,” “Titanic” and “Avatar”.
