A longtime James Cameron and Antoine Fuqua collaborator, he was additionally identified for his work on 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'Transformers: The Final Knight,' amongst others.
John Refoua, the Oscar-nominated editor who labored on Avatar and Avatar: The Method of Water, has died. He was 58.
Refoua died from problems from a uncommon bile duct most cancers known as cholangiocarcinoma, which he was identified with in early 2022, in accordance with his spouse, Serena Bell Refoua, who shared the information of his demise in a Fb publish.
“Regardless of the ache and complexities of this aggressive illness, he confronted it with braveness and grit,” Bell Refoua wrote. “He continued to work and edit on James Cameron’s Avatar 3proper as much as his remaining weeks. His life’s trajectory was fairly distinctive and something he touched, he made higher.”
An skilled and extensively revered editor, Refoua was a longtime collaborator of Cameron, working with the legendary filmmaker on the Avatar franchise, the Fox sci-fi collection Darkish Angel and the Titanic documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss. Refoua, together with Cameron and Stephen E. Rivkin had been nominated for greatest achievement in movie modifying on the 2010 Oscars for his or her joint work on Avatar.
In a 2010 Cine Montage interview, Refoua stated Cameron known as him in early 2007 to assist him for a couple of weeks on Avatar. The editor ended up engaged on the groundbreaking challenge for over two years. An enormous technical problem, the modifying staff on Avatar needed to really feel their means by means of the method and discover new methods of working. “The main focus from all of us was: How can we do that film in a means that is sensible? What's one of the simplest ways to do issues? There have been no set procedures, so we had been discovering issues as we went alongside,” Refoua instructed Cine Montage.
Cameron, Refoua and Rivkin would reunite for 2022’s Avatar: The Method of Water, with the late David Brenner additionally coming aboard as a fourth editor on one more large technically difficult challenge. Refoua’s work will even seem within the upcoming Avatar 3.
A favourite of Antoine Fuqua, Refoua labored on 4 movies in a row with the director, together with the action-adventure film Olympus Has Fallen (2013), the Denzel Washington-led thriller The Equalizer (2014), the brutal boxing drama Southpaw (2015) and Sony’s huge price range remake of The Magnificent Seven (2016).
Born in New York in 1964, Refoua started his modifying profession on tv within the early Nineteen Nineties. He labored on numerous reveals modifying episodes of Regulation & Order, Ally McBeal and Touched By an Angel earlier than having a extra prolonged run engaged on Fox’s crime drama New York Undercover.
From 2000 to 2002, Refoua edited or co-edited 16 episodes of the Cameron-created collection Darkish Angel which starred Jessica Alba. His different TV credit embody a number of episodes of Reno 911! and CSI: Miami.
Outdoors his work for Cameron and Fuqua, Refoua edited the movies Reno 911!: Miami (2007), Balls of Fury (2007), 21 & Over (2013), Geostorm (2017) and Transformers: The Final Knight (2017).
Survivors embody his spouse Serena and granddaughter Avery Sophia.