Askur — 16 years ago(February 10, 2010 04:44 AM)

"James Cameron has revealed that he shot early test footage for Avatar with Lost star Yunjin Kim.
Speaking to Popular Mechanics, the filmmaker said that he convinced studio 20th Century Fox to spend $10 million so that he could film the scene where protagonist Jake Sully first meets Na'vi alien Neytiri.
"We shot a five-minute scene," Cameron said of the early prep work. "I hired two actors, turns out one of them is now quite well-known - Yunjin Kim who is in Lost. There was Yunjin and a guy named Daniel Best. I took these two young actors and just did the scene. From that we took 40 seconds, because that's all we could afford, and had [visual effects studio] ILM take it through to a finished product."
Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington went on to fill Kim and Best's roles when the sci-fi blockbuster eventually went into production."
Source:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/movies/news/a192289/lost-star-shot-avatar- test-footage.html
And:
"LOST star Kim Yun Jin turned down the lead female role for the worldwide blockbuster, Avatar. Its quite hard to believe that someone would reject such a big movie, but its true. Most of you guys have probably seen Avatar or at least heard of it. The movie took around $350 million to make but its already made over $1 billion. Kim Yun Jin passed this chance up for filming for her hit series, LOST.
She was offered the role of Neytiri, the princess of the Navi, otherwise known as the tribe of big blue people. Maybe its for the better that she didnt accept the role because we wouldnt even get to see her face. The cool thing is, she was offered the role by the director himself, James Cameron."
Source:
http://www.allkpop.com/2010/01/kim-yun-jin-turned-down-avatar
If that's true, I hope her part is included on the extra material on the DVD.