Reports of a re-release first surfaced on Thursday when Imax CEO Richard Gelfond spoke at an investor conference in New York City predicting a late summer/fall release. Gelfond mentioned that Cameron had about 40 minutes of material that didn't make the theatrical cut.
The director says theatre owners believe they lost "a couple of hundred million dollars" in total when Avatar was ousted from their 3-D screens by Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which is also a 3-D movie.