James Cameron Planning an Avatar Trilogy

Published by Jeff Leins

Once Avatar started setting box office records, it was inevitable talk of a sequel would emerge.  The science fiction epic is up to $1.4 billion worldwide (just $400 million shy of Titanic), and this weekend it will pass Star Wars to become the third highest-grossing movie of all-time at the domestic box office.

Rumors of a second adventure on Pandora circulated until James Cameron himself attended a Variety-hosted screening and Q&A in Hollywood.  The director confirmed “there’ll be another” and said the plan was always to make a trilogy of films, according to an account on Ain’t It Cool News.

The new issue of Entertainment Weekly confirmed the trilogy concept with a quote from Cameron.  “I’ve had a storyline in mind from the start — there are even scenes in Avatar that I kept in because they lead to the sequel,” Cameron said. “It just makes sense to think of it as a two or three film arc, in terms of the business plan. The CG plants and trees and creatures and the musculo-skeletal rigging of the main characters — that all takes an enormous amount of time to create. It’d be a waste not to use it again.” Any thoughts on what scenes set up a sequel?

As usual with high-profile blockbusters, Sam Worthington is signed for an eventual sequel and a new adventure as Jake Sully.  Stephen Lang even joked about returning to the series as the scarred Col. Quaritch.  “Nothing’s over so long as they’ve got my DNA.” Cameron is expected to return as the director.

As for a potential plot line, you might remember Pandora is just one of many moons orbiting the planet Polyphemus.  Cameron has said he has story ideas on how to branch out onto the other surfaces in the solar system.  Oh great, more planets that will make people depressed upon learning they aren’t real.

The original took over a decade in conception and four years in actual production, so if we’re lucky we could see Avatar 2 by maybe 2014?  I have to believe he’ll be able to turn a sequel around much quicker than that, especially if he’s already hatched an arc to the stories and developed the 3-D performance capture technology.  That’s the hope any way.