Harry from AICN recently had a interesting little phone call from James Cameron, and the slow-moving yet still-revolutionary filmmaker had some fairly interesting info to impart regarding his just (finally and officially) announced project "Avatar."

I'll break some of the more interesting bits down by bullet points, but be sure to check out the whole interview right here.

--Although he'll probably finish the "gung ho" section of production before the end of this year, Mr. Cameron will still need until 2009 to get his pet project up to speed. That's simply how long it'll take the Weta Workshop folks to build all the effects work.

--The non-human creatures will be almost exclusively CGI, while the humans will be brought to the screen via mostly motion capture technology.

--Cameron cast relative newcomers Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana because "Avatar" was never envisioned as a "movie star" type project. "Significant casting" is still going on.

That's most of the juicy stuff; Cameron had to go because there was a fire raging not too far away. Yikes!