Never one for an understatement, legendary director James Cameron has compared the process of creating his sequels to Avatar with writing his own series of The Lord of the Rings style novels from which to adapt them.
Speaking exclusively with Empire Magazine for their Avatar: The Way of the Water issue, the director of Terminator 2 and The Abyss spoke about the world-building he has undertaken since the first film broke records back in 2009.
Comparing it to the 12 year process it took J.R.R. Tolkien to write his fantasy opus, Cameron said “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.”
However, not all of that time was spent expanding the world of Pandora, because even the usually confident Cameron had doubts about whether they should make a sequel, also telling Empire “I had to think long and hard whether I even wanted to make another Avatar film, because it was kind of ours to lose” He continued “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.”
SEE ALSO: Avatar: The Way of Water images spotlight Kate Winslet and Sigourney Weaver’s Na’vi characters
You can find out more about Empire’s exclusive here, and don’t forget to let us know what you think of Cameron’s comments by heading to our social channels @FlickeringMyth….
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, “Avatar: The Way of Water” 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 is directed by James Cameron and sees Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Matt Gerald, Dileep Rao, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, and Sigourney Weaver all reprising their roles from the 2009 blockbuster, while new additions to the cast include Kate Winslet, Oona Chaplin, Cliff Curtis, Britain Dalton, Filip Geljo, Jamie Flatters, Bailey Bass, Trinity Bliss, Jack Champion, Duane Evans Jr., Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Michelle Yeoh, Jemaine Clement, Keston John, and CJ Jones.
Avatar: The Way of Water is set for release on December 16th.
