In case you haven’t heard, James Cameron’s upcoming “Avatar” will change the way you do everything, from eat, sleep, to putting the moves on that kinda cute co-worker down the hall. Or maybe it’ll just be a really nice couple of hours at the movies. Either/or. TIME magazine goes behind the scenes of Cameron’s “Avatar”, and comes back with $300 million buckaroos worth of Oooooohs, Awwwwwwwws, and Mmmmmmm.

Here’s an excerpt from TIME on “Avatar”:

Cameron’s Avatar, due in December, could be the thing that forces theaters to convert to digital. Spielberg predicts it will be the biggest 3-D live-action film ever. More than a thousand people have worked on it, at a cost in excess of $300 million, and it represents digital filmmaking’s bleeding edge. Cameron wrote the treatment for it in 1995 as a way to push his digital-production company to its limits. (“We can’t do this,” he recalled his crew saying. “We’ll die.”) He worked for years to build the tools he needed to realize his vision. The movie pioneers two unrelated technologies–e-motion capture, which uses images from tiny cameras rigged to actors’ heads to replicate their expressions, and digital 3-D.

And oh yeah, did I mention “Avatar” costs $300 million to make? Economic downturn my butt!