On the eve of 'Avatar,' a look at Hollywood gambles past

NEW YORK —

It's fair to say that it's a risky venture to create a movie about an exotically colored, 10-foot-tall tribe called the Na'vi and spend more money making it than any other film in the history of Hollywood.

Yet investing hundreds of millions of dollars in James Cameron's "Avatar" (exact figures aren't available but the total cost, including marketing, is expected to run close to half a billion dollars) is a bet likely to pay off for 20th Century Fox.

Cameron has a box-office track record matched by few. And, in case there was any worry, Fox is running an enormous advertising campaign that included the unusual step of previewing 15 minutes of the film nationwide in August. Early reviews for the movie, which opens in Seattle-area theaters late Thursday night, have also been positive.

But however many millions "Avatar" earns, it clearly sits firmly in the grand tradition of audacious Hollywood spectacles — the kind of over-the-top, go-for-broke grabs for silver-screen glory.

A sampling of moviedom's risky business — all, for better or worse, available on DVD:

"Titanic": Yes, Cameron has been here before. The run-up to the release of 1997's "Titanic" had all the hallmarks of an enormous flop in the making: cost overruns (its production budget reached a then record $200 million), blown deadlines, a 17-million-gallon tank — you know, the usual stuff. But it made $600 million domestically and $1.2 billion internationally and won 11 Academy Awards.

"Waterworld": Water was good for "Titanic," but unkind to Kevin Costner's 1995 soggy epic. Costner, not long off "Dances With Wolves," "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and "JFK," was then a big star. Budget costs ballooned, the central set sank and Cost-

ner clashed with director Kevin Reynolds, eventually replacing him during editing. With a budget of $175 million, it grossed $88 million at the box office for Universal Pictures.

"The Lord of the Ring" trilogy: Eight years and $285 million is a lot to sink into a director unproven in large-scale films. But New Line's gamble that Peter Jackson could bring home J.R.R. Tolkien's story — and that the audience would be there for the second and third films — paid off in spades. Shooting all three of the films together was a classic boom-or-bust tactic. The trilogy made $2.9 billion worldwide, better even than the original "Star Wars" trilogy.

"Heaven's Gate": As much as "Rings" filled the coffers at New Line, Michael Cimino's 1980 Western emptied them at United Artists. It's generally viewed as the film that prompted studios to reel in their talented directors, who had found freedom in the 1960s and 1970 while making some of Hollywood's best films. Made for an estimated $42 million (or about $149 million today, accounting for inflation), it grossed only $3 million. The New York Times compared the 219-minute film to "a forced four-hour walking tour of one's own living room."