The Duo That Was: Bigelow, Cameron

James Cameron‘s highly anticipated return to feature film making “Avatar” has received glorious reviews and fanfare to go along with its outlandish pricetag. Meanwhile, Kathryn Bigelow‘s taut war drama “The Hurt Locker” has been grabbing rabid praise and is likely the front-runner for film of the year at the Oscars. However, many have yet to point out an interesting connection between the two– they were married. Read on for the full story.

Now, I won’t make this more than it is- Cameron and Bigelow were only married for two years from 1989 to 1991- but it certainly is an interesting point that two of the most well-regarded filmmakers this year were once a couple. Just imagine if they were still together today. Would bring new meaning to the phrase “power couple”.

Another curious development is that the Best Picture field was increased to 10 nominees at the Academy Awards this year, which means that Avatar is nearly assured a best pic nomination and will be running against Bigelow’s Locker. Perhaps Avatar would have made the nominee list regardless, but again- interesting.

Other parallels exist, including the meticulous way that both filmmakers worked on their films. Variety ran a story focusing solely on the sound in Locker while there have been many reports on the extraordinary steps that were taken for the explosions in the film as well.

Meanwhile, Cameron’s love for the technology that was developed for Avatar and his push for 3-D film making have been nearly driven into the ground.

Jeremy Renner was brought to the forefront...

Want one more similarity? Bigelow utilized an actor that rarely got top billing in awards contention films to star, front and center, in her tense war flick. The result is that Jeremy Renner will now be a hopeful for best lead performance and will become a hot commodity in future films.

...while Sam Worthington was discovered.

For Cameron, he searched and found then little-known Australian actor Sam Worthington to be the lead in Avatar, one of the most expensive films ever made. Since being hand picked by Cameron, Worthington was also recommended to director McG by Cameron (who created the Terminator franchise) for a lead role in “Terminator: Salvation”. Worthington will also headline a star studded cast as Perseus in the upcoming blockbuster remake “Clash of the Titans”.

While these seem only to be coincidences, it’s fun nonetheless to find the similarities between the two filmmakers (and their films) this year.