It looks like James Cameron is to take a leaf of out Peter Jackson’s book, with the acclaimed filmmaker revealing during a press conference that he plans to shoot his three planned Avatar sequels in New Zealand, with Fox co-president of worldwide theatrical marketing Paul Hanneman stating that the country “offers unparalleled support to films of this scale.” Cameron went on to reiterate his plans to release Avatar 2 in December 2016, Avatar 3 in December 2017 and Avatar 4 in December 2018, as well as revealing that work on the sequels is already underway with Jackson’s effects company Weta.
“It’s going to be a lot of new imagery and a lot of new environments and creatures across Pandora,” states Cameron. “We’re blowing it out all over the place. At first I thought I was going to take it onto other worlds as well, in the same solar system, but it turned out not to be necessary. I mean the Pandora that we have imagined will be a fantasy land that is going to occupy people for decades to come, the way I see it. There’s a fair bit of underwater stuff. It’s been inaccurately said that the second film takes place underwater. That’s not true. There are underwater scenes and surface-water scenes having to do with indigenous ocean cultures that are distributed across the three films. I said to Joe Letteri (Weta Digital’s visual-effects supervisor) , you know, there’s a lot of water and he basically said ‘Bring it on. We’re ready… [Avatar] was very Jake-centric. His story seen through his eyes. We spread it around quite a bit more as we go forward. It’s really the story of his family, the family that he creates on Pandora. His extended family. So think of it as a family saga like The Godfather.”
So far, very little is known about the follow-ups to the highest-grossing movie of all time, although it has been confirmed that Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang will all reprise their roles from the 2009 original. Meanwhile, the scripts for the films are being written by Cameron alongside Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds) and Shane Salerno (Savages).
Originally published December 16, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
