Mark Canton, producer of Piranha 3D, is not letting James Cameron bad-mouth his movie without putting his two cents in.
“Let’s just keep this in mind Jim… you did not invent 3D,” he retorted.
James Cameron voiced his clear displeasure with the Piranha 3D movie to Vanity Fair, saying he had zero sense of nostalgia when the new Piranha movie came out. (Maybe he’s bitter? He admitted he worked a couple days on Piranha 2 before being fired.)
“I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D,” Cameron said snootily.
Canton retorted today with an issued statement, basically calling out the King of the (Na’vi) World on his smack talk. He said:
Those of us who have tried to stay in touch with the common movie audiences – the ones who really matter, the ones who actually still go to the theatre, put on the glasses, and eat the popcorn – take joy and pride in the fact that movies of all kinds, including PIRANHA 3D, have a place in filmmaking history – past, present and future. 3D unto itself is not a genre Jim, it is a tool that gives audiences an enhanced experience as they experience all kinds of movies.
Burn. He goes on to name drop JJ Abrams, who Canton claims liked the movie. Pointing out rival director who liked your movie = double burn. (If only Canton pointed out that Avatar’s plot was more unoriginal that Piranha’s he would have had the win, but he didn’t dare venture there.)
This is building up to be bigger than when director Uwe Boll challenged Michael Bay to a boxing match. (Bay declined saying on his message board, “The guy is a f—- idiot, making threats to me, Clooney, Eli Roth, says he has a doctorate—but uses the word ‘retard’ in his vocabulary, come on.”)
It may not come to a throw down, but this is war… of the words.