Ribisi joins Avatar

How’s this for a little bit of late casting news. Well into production, James Cameron has added popular character actor (and personal favourite of mine) Giovanni Ribisi (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN) to the cast of his $190 million epic AVATAR. Ribisi will play a passive-aggressive character named Selfridge, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Obviously, since Giovanni (I can call him by his first name because we’re best bros) is made of flesh and blood, and takes dumps after he mows big meals, he’ll be playing a real man, and not one of the six “synthespians”, characters that are made of microchips and binary digits. Giovanni joins the cast of “realthespians” that include Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, and Zoe Saldana.

We’ve heard a great deal of AVATAR thus far, considering it’s being kept ‘under wraps’ but have yet to see any stills from the production. But everything we’ve heard so far has sounded revolutionary, and you can expect this film to be every bit of the cinema milestone it’s being touted as. Production moves to New Zealand next month to work with Peter Jackson’s digital effects company WETA, and the film is set for a May 22 release date in the futuristic year of 2009.