James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian film director, producer, screenwriter and film inventor. His writing and directing work include The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Aliens,Titanic and Avatar. To date, his directorial efforts have grossed approximately US$1.3 billion in North America (adjusted for inflation) and close to US$3.5 billion worldwide. After several feature films, Cameron turned his focus to documentary filmmaking and the co-development of the digital 3-D Fusion Camera System. He returned to feature filmmaking with the epic science fiction film Avatar, which made use of the Fusion Camera System technology. Avatar was released in theaters on December 17th, 2009.