James Cameron Offers an Update On His AVATAR Sequels and The Production Process
James Cameron recently wrapped 2019 production on his Avatar sequels and he’s now offering an update on the films and has also opened up about the production process. As you might imagine, making four new movies with this epic scope isn’t an easy task, but they are on track to have these films ready for their release dates.
“From 2013 until now we’ve mostly designed the whole world across four new movies. We’ve written, finished scripts for all four of those films. We’ve cast them, and we’ve [performance] captured movie 2, movie 3, and the first part of movie 4. We’re mostly done with the live action. I’ve got a couple months in New Zealand in spring, so we’re kind of on track with what we set out to do.”
He went on to explain the process of creating these films, saying:
“People don’t really understand the scope and complexity of the process. It’s like making two and a half big animated films. A typical big animated film takes about four years, so, if you do the math on that, we’re kind of right on schedule for December 2021.”
The cast of the Avatar franchise includes returning cast members Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao, Stephen Lang, Matt Gerald and Sigourney Weaver. They will be joined by new cast members Kate Winslet, Edie Falco, Michelle Yeoh, Vin Diesel, Jemaine Clement, and Oona Chaplin alongside a slate of young actors.
We don’t really have any plot details on the sequels, but we know that Avatar 2 is set several years after Avatar. “At the center of each of our four movies will be the Sully family. Each sequel will play as a standalone movie. Each movie’s story will come to its own conclusion… However, when looked at as a whole, the journey across all four movies will create an even larger connected epic saga for audiences around the world.”
When previously talking about the films, Jon Landau opened up about the setting for the sequels, saying:
“As we’ve moved on with the sequels to Avatar we made a very conscious decision to stage the whole four sequels on Pandora. We don’t need to go to another world if we want water, we’re going to go to the oceans of Pandora.
”It’s a continuation of the same characters, but what happen when warriors that are willing to go on suicide charges, and leap off cliffs on to the back of big orange toruks, what happens when they grow up and have their own kids? It becomes a very different story. Now the kids are the risk-takers and the change-makers. So, it’s interesting, but it makes sense to me. Everybody’s either a parent, or they had parents at the very least, and if you look at the big successful franchises now, they’re pretty much uninterested in that.”
It was also revealed that are different clans of Na’vi all over Pandora:
“We’re going to go to totally different environments, we’re going to meet different cultures. Just like our planet is as diverse culturally as we are environmentally. We want to introduce people to different cultures. In the first movie, we only met the Omaticaya clan, and they are the clan here allowing us to come to the Valley of Mo’ara. But as we venture out we’re going to different environments and different clans.”
Avatar 2 will hit theaters on December 17, 2021, followed by Avatar 3 on December 22, 2023; then Avatar 4 on December 19, 2025; and finally Avatar 5 on December 17, 2027.
Source: Variety