Avatar: Tales From the Crash

That's not a planned sequel to forthcoming sci-fi head-exploder, but rather the low-concept prequel in which the supercomputer designed to accommodate ticket requests for this Friday's Avatar Day throws up its virtual hands and laughs in James Cameron's face.

The sluggishness reported here yesterday was in fact the slow recovery from an honest-to-goodness implosion, according to the film's Twitter feed. "Due to the overwhelming response for tickets to the Avatar event on 8/21, our servers have crashed. We will update you as soon as possible!"

The main film site had reportedly only distributed 17,000 of its maximum 68,000 tickets when the system first went haywire around noon PDT. The snafu was corrected by mid-afternoon, by which time most of the tickets were moving at a rate of five per second and were soon gone in New York and Los Angeles. A full investigation is expected, but don't sweat it too much: The Nav'i tanning beds held up without any trouble at all, which we all know is the only thing that matters.

· Avatar site crashes as fans seek tickets [THR]