The actress gives us some sneaks of James Cameron's much-anticipated return to sci-fi.

While at the Dallas AFI International Film Festival promoting her upcoming movie, Battle in Seattle, Michelle Rodriguez (Lost, Girlfight) took a moment to discuss some details of another one of her projects -- a little James Cameron movie you might have heard of called Avatar.

Avatar will be Cameron's return to feature film directing since Titanic came out over 10 years ago. "That guy, James Cameron. I love him," Rodriguez exclaimed. "Put it this way, if I didn't have so many bills every month, I would love to be his assistant and just learn from him, just be his apprentice."

Not much is known about Cameron's long-awaited film. What we do know is that it's a big-budget sci-fi blockbuster about future humans who find themselves in a war with a humanoid race of aliens on a fictional planet called Pandora. Rodriguez plays an ex-Marine helicopter pilot named Trudy Chacon.

Although IMDB lists Avatar as in post-production and the teaser posters promise a release date of summer 2009, Rodriguez thinks that may be overly optimistic. "Let's just say it's a work in progress," she said, adding that the current hoped-for release is actually December 2009. "Hopefully, if all goes well," she said.

But Rodriguez is enthusiastic that when it does hit theaters, Avatar will be well worth the wait. "It just blows me away," she said. "The technology -- for me, it was like being part of the transition from black and white to color. It's a whole new system."

Avatar is intended to be a mix live-action and 3-D, that Cameron is filming in a new digital 3-D format. "It's a different kind of 3-D. Yeah man!" exclaimed Rodriguez. "He's facilitated it in a way where it's so easy to work with this technology and it's pleasing and it's the new thing. I just loved to be a part of it. I'm part of making history, you know? It's pretty awesome!" she said.

But not only was the process good from the actor's perspective, Rodriguez expects the audiences will respond, too. "I think people are really going to welcome this experience with open arms," she said. "And I have to call it an 'experience' because it's not like just going to watch a movie. You're actually going to experience it."

Michelle Rodriguez can next be seen in Battle in Seattle, directed by Stuart Townsend.