James Cameron Opens Up About ‘Avatar’ Sequels
It’s easy to forget in the long Na’vi drought we are currently living in, but director James Cameron has been hard at work on developing the sequels to Avatar, a film that demolished the box office with just under $2.8 billion worldwide, making it the highest grossing film in the history of cinema. Even the likes of The Avengers (which grossed around $1.5 billion worldwide) hasn’t manage to get remotely close to the financial heights Avatar reached. Although we still have until December of 2016 until the first of three Avatar sequels hits the theaters, Empire recently had a conversation with James Cameron on the film series’ progress.
“I can tell you one thing about them,” Cameron joked. “They’re gonna be b**chin’. You will sh*t yourself with your mouth wide open.”
All kidding aside, Cameron went on to discuss the writing process. Unlike the first film in the series, Avatar 2, 3, and 4 will be written by a team rather than by Cameron himself.
“I think we met for seven months and we whiteboarded out every scene in every film together, and I didn’t assign each writer which film they were going to work on until the last day. I knew if I assigned them their scripts ahead of time, they’d tune out every time we were talking about the other movie.”
According to Screen Rant, the writing duties for the Avatar sequels will divided up be as follows: Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes) are writing Avatar 2, Josh Friedman (The Sarah Connor Chronicles) is writing Avatar 3, and Shane Salerno (Savages) is writing writing Avatar 4. No doubt with such great talent riding behind the script, the story and dialogue for the films will likely be a healthy step up from the first film — which, while great on spectacle and experience, was criticized for its cliched plot and dialogue.
Visually, James Cameron has consistently set the bar to a whole new level with each film he’s put out, and the Avatar sequels will be no exception. Like Peter Jackson did before him in The Hobbit, Cameron is looking to release the film at 48 frames per second, despite rumors that he’d be going 60 frames per second. What this means for audiences is that your eye will have a harder time distinguishing between what is on the screen and what is in real life (It’s this very thing that is likely responsible for the numerous headaches reported after seeing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in theaters). Cameron always seems to have his eyes to the future, so while it’s hard for many to push through today, there may yet be a time when it becomes mainstream.
The three Avatar sequels will be shot simultaneously. Avatar 2 will be released in theaters December 2016, while 3 and 4 will be released on the same month in 2017 and 2018, respectively. With the films being released so close together, will the novelty soon wear, or is James Cameron such a visionary that people will come out in droves regardless? Let us know what you think below!
