"Titanic" producer fearless over latest movie

Hollywood producer Jon Landau said Friday he had no doubt that his latest feature with "Titanic" director James Cameron would live up to its billing as the year's most-anticipated film.

The 300-million-dollar "Avatar", packed with computer-generated imagery and 3-D effects, is the pair's first project together since scooping 11 Oscars with "Titanic" in 1998.

"Any fear about this film is long behind us," Landau said on the sidelines of the 14th Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea, after screening 30-minutes of selected scenes from the film.

"When we started it was a little like the people at NASA who first went to the moon," he said.

"When John Kennedy said they were going to put someone on the moon, they didn't really know how they were going to do it and when we started we had an idea but we had no idea how we were going to do it either."

Landau and Cameron have spent the past four-and-a-half years putting the new film together, promising a combination of computer-generated imagery, 3-D effects and live action, the likes of which the world has never seen.

The pair seem to be on the money -- just as they were with "Titanic", which despite doubts from initial test screenings and critics went on to gross close to two billion dollars worldwide, making it the all-time box office champion.

"Avatar" follows the exploits of paraplegic army veteran who is taken to another world where his genes are mixed with those of an alien creature -- the new being becoming the "avatar" of the film's title.

"The excitement for me is that we are finally going to be able to show something that we have been working on for four-and-a-half years. Because a film is nothing if no one sees it," said Landau.

"No single movie can revolutionise the movie industry but one film can be a step in the evolution of movies. What we think we are doing here is unlocking the door for more filmmakers to tell more stories."

"Avatar" is set for its worldwide release on December 18th.