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" LAS VEGAS--Avatar producer Jon Landau was on hand yesterday at Panasonic&amp;#039;s CES press conference to extoll the virtues of Panasonic&amp;#039;s plasma monitors (which the filmmakers used for on-set playback during the film&amp;#039;s production) and to discuss the future of 3D. PM caught up with him for a brief chat about life since the release of Avatar. Now that Avatar has grossed over $1 billion globally since its December 18 release, it is easy to forget the mixed pre-release buzz that included doubts about whether the public would embrace a movie some described as &amp;quot;Dances with Smurfs,&amp;quot; or a &amp;quot;Ferngully ripoff.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We had to tell the studio to relax,&amp;quot; Landau said. &amp;quot;What matters in the end is the movie, and we knew that the movie works.&amp;quot; Landau said that when he and director James Cameron decided to showcase Avatar at the BNAT film festival run by film-geek god Harry Knowles (of Ain&amp;#039;t It Cool News), the studio advised against it: &amp;quot;They didn&amp;#039;t want us to go. They said, &amp;#039;those are the people who say all the mean things about you.&amp;#039; We said, none of that matters.&amp;quot; Asked if anything about the subsequent reception of the film has surprised the filmmakers, Landau said, &amp;quot;No surprises, really, but a sense of vindication. It&amp;#039;s proof of what we&amp;#039;ve been saying all along--that this movie would play to a lot of audiences, women as well as men.&amp;quot; Like other Hollywood bigwigs at CES (Dreamworks chief Jeffrey Katzenberg made an appearance at Samsung&amp;#039;s event to announce the 3D Blu-ray release of Monsters vs. Aliens), Landau is bullish on the future of 3D--and not just for big screens or mega-blockbusters. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s for big movies, it&amp;#039;s for little movies,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;In the future, people will expect all of their content to be 3D.&amp;quot; Landau seems to be enjoying a bit of a reprieve after the multi-year slog to help the notoriously hard-charging Cameron bring Avatar to the screen. His post-press conference plans in Las Vegas included going out to dinner with his wife. After all, he said, &amp;quot;I haven&amp;#039;t seen her in four years.&amp;quot;\u00C2 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a5138/4341701/>