Just two months ago, James Cameron was promising his three Avatar sequels (set to open in 2016, 2017, and 2018) would make you “sh*t yourself with your mouth wide open.” We’re not sure that’s a feature, but okay. The first movie was planned to open at the same time as the Avatar attraction at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. We say “was” because James Cameron offered an update. He’s in New Zealand now, where he shot the first movie and plans to shoot the next three, and while we were asleep he was telling reporters Avatar 2 will release in 2017 instead.
Cameron said the goal was to have the scripts for the three movies completed by the end of this month. He’s leading a team that’s writing the screenplays.
“We’re writing three simultaneously. And we’ve done that so that everything tracks throughout the three films. We’re not just going to do one and then make up another one and another one after that,” he said. “And parallel with that, we’re doing all the design. So we’ve designed all the creatures and the environments.”
Cameron said he thought it was important that each film linked forward to the next one in a satisfying way but also came to a resolution so that the audience wasn’t left hanging.
Or, to summarize.
Cameron cited the “complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films” as a reason to delay everything a year. As far as we know, Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, and Stephen Lang are still signed on to return, and Saldana and Worthington’s characters will have kids in the sequels. Who knew catty ponytail sex could lead to kittens?
Interest in the sequels seems to be strangely mild considering Avatar made $2.8 billion and won three Oscars in 2009. It was the highest-grossing film in history at that time, and yet all we can think about is that the sequel should be called Avatar 2: Return To Planet Catsex. Our offer is still open for them to use this poster.
