THE DARK SIDE OF PANDORA EMERGES

JAMIE LANDAU, AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH CO-PRODUCER AND SON OF JON LANDAU, SHARES HOW THEY FINISHED THE FILM WITH THE INTENTION OF HONOURING HIS FATHER

- TARA BENNETT

FROM THE INCEPTION of James Cameron’s first formalised ideas for Avatar back in 1994, one of the earliest collaborators standing beside him, helping facilitate its development, was Jon Landau, a trusted producer for his production company Lightstorm. They first bonded on True Lies in 1993, and then went on to forge the kind of partnership that allowed Cameron to stay laser-focused on making his films while Landau handled the day to day. From PR to visual effects notes to playing ref with studio heads and collecting the remarkable heads of department, crew members and cast that Cameron wanted, Landau was the guy who made it happen.

So it was unthinkable when Landau passed away from oesophageal cancer in July 2024, because he was the other lobe of Cameron’s brain at Lightstorm. While his loss was a shock to the outside world, his son Jamie Landau tells SFX that his father was aware of his prognosis and got serious about training others in the company to carry his baton forward. “I was lucky that while he was here and healthy and really kicking, he started putting more responsibilities in my court and letting me roll with it,” the younger Landau shares. “When he passed away, the best analogy is something that Jim said, which was, ‘If you have a bowl of marbles and in the middle is this big marble, you take that out and there’s not - all of a sudden - this big hole. All the other marbles fill that space.”

Having started as a production assistant on Avatar, Jamie says he was first encouraged to learn by observation the vital parts of production. He then became a member of the performance capture troupe in New Zealand working on Avatar: The Way Of Water and the latest sequel,