Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’ve heard the buzz about Avatar: James Cameron’s multi-million dollar film – his first since 1997’s Titanic – which is being heralded as the most expensive movie ever made. Let’s just hope for his sake he doesn’t end up with a WaterWorld on his hands (will Kevin Costner ever live that down?)

The buzz has been building for this film over the year. Media relations started to unfold before the movie was even complete. Cameron appeared last October on The Hour and spoke about the film. He revealed that he’s been working – in one way or another – on the film for 14 years; that new 3D film technology was created just for this project; that it’s the most challenging movie he’s ever made.

And what key messages have been appearing in most of the news articles dealing with this film? You guessed it (see above).  

The communications team has also been hard at work strategically timing the release of information surrounding the movie. Last month, Fox issued a news release announcing “Avatar Day,” the day when “the world will get its first look at director James Cameron’s motion picture epic AVATAR, when Twentieth Century Fox and Cameron debut the film’s trailer everywhere – while select cinemas and IMAX® theaters will screen extended footage prepared by the renowned filmmaker for this global ‘Avatar Day’ event.”

More than 100,000 sci-fi fans rushed out to buy limited seats to a 16-minute trailer of the film on the same day that the standard trailer was released to the masses (last Friday). According to the New York Times, “Greg Foster, the chairman and president of Imax Filmed Entertainment, said he was not aware of any contemporary movie promotion that had gone quite so far in making an event out of a film tease.”  No cell phones were permitted into any of the theatres where the trailers were being shown.

The online community has been madly tweeting, blogging and pontificating about the potential success of this epic. The last online search I did generated 1500+ news articles on Avatar from around the globe. Not too shabby for a movie that no one’s seen yet. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

It will be interesting to observe what other tactics the communications team employs in the next few months – after all, the movie isn’t coming out until December. There’s still plenty of time to whip people into an absolute frenzy.