Avatar: Is The Schedule Really Slipping? No Sign Of Weekend Shooting...

Exclusive: Parts of the James Cameron 3D epic Avatar may be lagging behind, some more than others. As confirmed in this previous MarketSaw exclusive post, Michelle Rodriguez's segments are only one day behind thus far and that my insider's segments are delayed until mid-November.

Now comes a report from my Avatar production insider that there was no activity this past Saturday at all on the set in Wellington, New Zealand. Weekend production is just not happening. "Looks like they are taking the weekends off, no obvious signs of filming last Saturday".

This seems strange to me. If you have that kind of investment ($200 million) tied up in production and labor, real deadlines to meet (Rodriguez has a very hard stop on Christmas Eve for instance) and looming strikes (writers just walked), I would kinda want to get going and kick it up to 16 hours x 7 days a week. Why are we seeing a slowdown? Doesn't make sense to me at all really.

What's missing here? Something. Keep an eye here on MarketSaw and I will update you the second I know.

SAME DAY UPDATE: Michelle Rodriguez has been spotted at the Wellington airport on Nov. 4th by Flickr' Elaine. Rodriguez has also been at the Pukekohe races (V8race) which is up near Auckland. So that's a fair amount of away time from the set if you ask me. You just don't have time to sightsee and travel if you are knee-deep in production. I understand that the official word from Michelle's camp is that she is working on Avatar - I'm am just trying to get to the bottom of whether or not they are on schedule or not. Again, my guess is NOT.

More when I get it!