James Cameron Pitched His AVATAR Sequel Saga as a LORD OF THE RINGS Sized Epic
Director James Cameron recently shared some insight on his initial Avatar sequel pitch to 20th Century Fox, and likened his sequel saga concept to adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The filmmaker explained to Empire:
“What I said to the Fox regime at the time was, ‘I’ll do it, but we’ve got to play a larger game here. I don’t want to just do a movie and do a movie and do a movie. I want to tell a bigger story’. I said, ‘Imagine a series of novels like The Lord Of The Rings existed, and we’re adapting them.’ Now, that was great in theory, but then I had to go create the frickin’ novels from which to adapt it.”
And that explains why it took Cameron over a decade to get these films made! He’s had to create the entire world and stories for his Avatar sequels and then adapt them for the big screen. Cameron went on to talk about the pressure of replicating the crazy success of the first film, saying:
“I had to think long and hard whether I even wanted to make another Avatar film, because it was kind of ours to lose. When you’ve done something that’s been that transcendent in terms of success, do you really want to go try and do that again? There’s a lot of pressure on it. I thought about it for a good two years before we finally made a deal.”
I really do hope that Cameron pulls this off and that these upcoming Avatar sequels end up being great and successful films. Only time will tell if audiences are excited to jump back into the world of Pandora.
Speaking to Empire in the upcoming, world-exclusive Avatar: The Way Of Water issue, the filmmaker opened up about the plans he’s been cooking up for over a decade now.
The sequel is set more than a decade after the events of the first film. It “begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.”
Avatar: The Way of Water stars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, and Kate Winslet. It hits theaters on December 14th, 2022.