John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Of the "how" ideas mentioned, I most like having post-production go as scheduled, allowing for a summer release. Any ideas for a 1996 to pin this down?
This timeline helped give me the answer -- have Cameron begin editing in January (or early February), when production is wrapping up. Then, you could potentially have a rough edit (that OTL wasn't ready until June 2) a month earlier, meaning the execs will likely want to stick to the July 4 deadline. They may throw some extra money the productions way to keep the effects on schedule (in which case it's about the same film only earlier) -- or maybe not, and the six week cram of final editing actually produces something quite different from OTL.
Either way, being released on July 4 and competing with films like Men in Black is going to cut into the bottom line -- even if it's the summer's biggest hit, it won't be history changing...