Louis Leterrier To Direct 'Fantastic Voyage' For Producer James Cameron?

It was only hours ago that we heard James Cameron had hired Laeta Kalogridis to rewrite Shane Salerno's script for Fantastic Voyage, the big-budget sci-fi remake he's planning with Fox. At the time there was no director attached, but now a report says that James Cameron has his eye on Louis Leterrier, who last made Clash of the Titans for Warner Bros.

Deadline says Mr. Leterrier is the producer's choice, and that designers from Avatar "have done everything but build sets for a film that could be ready to shoot early in 2011." With a script rewrite taking place there isn't yet a budget, and the final number is likely to be high.Fantastic Voyage, after, all, sees a scientific team shrunk to microscopic size and injected into a man's body in order to save his life. Once in his body, a great percentage of the film will be CGI.

But wait a second. Hasn't James Cameron slagged off Mr. Leterrier's last film, the lousy post-converted 3D adventure Clash of the Titans? well, yes and no. He has slagged Warner Bros. and the way the studio did the conversion, but not the director. In the interview Mr. Cameron recently gave to the New York Times he said,

I talked to Louis Leterrier, who did "Clash of the Titans," and he was in England mixing the movie while they were doing the 3-D here. So the filmmaker wasn't even involved in the process. It was just being applied like a layer, purely for profit motive. There was no artistry to it whatsoever. Now everybody's realizing that's not the right way to do it.

If Louis Leterrier wants to make a 3D film and do it in 3D from stage one, there's no one better to partner with than James Cameron.