James Cameron has some lofty plans for Avatar in the near future. Despite a string of delays to Avatar 2 over the past few years, Cameron is still planning to film all of the sequels to the box office leading original at the same time and then release them a year apart once completed. That would make a total of four more Avatar movies, all attempting to break box office records while telling the story of Jake on Pandora, fighting alongside his new giant blue cat person brethren.
While celebrating the anniversary of Aliens at Comic-Con, Cameron opened up about his plans for the series and just why he ended up with so many sequels on the release schedule:
“The ‘Avatar’ story arc was originally meant to be a trilogy, but I overwrite, and my writers overwrote as well,” Cameron told Variety in an interview. “But basically the first of the sequels cloned itself and became two films, so now it’s four films. And the studio’s very happy with it. They have an opportunity to make more money, but it’s also an opportunity to spend a lot more money, too, so there’s a clench factor.”
The aim, he said, is to orchestrate production in such a way that he can drop the films a year apart. But he’s unsure if that will ultimately be possible.
I always like that Cameron isn’t too worried about talking the brass tacks of the movie business, where some directors might give some flowery, creative answer to questions like the one above. It’s all good as long as he isn’t dropping unrealistic praise on a movie like Terminator: Genisys. Also fun knowing that he could just spend the rest of his life talking about Avatar sequels and never actually make one. He has no need to do so at this point.
(Via Variety)
