James Cameron has laid out a mission plan ahead of the release of Avatar 2: to prove that the 2009 original won’t go down in the cinematic history books as “some big fluke.” Now, it seems the director has set his sights on Christmas of 2017 to launch the next chapter in his ambitious sci-fi universe.
Planning to shoot no less than three sequels simultaneously, the original release date of Avatar 2 was pushed to lend Cameron more time to flesh out the world of Pandora and its many moons. Nevertheless, late 2017 is now the preliminary milestone.
Cameron revealed the nugget in an interview with Montreal Gazette, where he teased a meta-narrative that will underpin the sci-fi trilogy and how each standalone chapter will dovetail into a “much larger story.” Will we finally dive deep into the sky-blue oceans of Pandora?
“Christmas of ’17 is the target. At least, that’s what we’ve announced. But I don’t consider that to be as important as the fact that when we get all three films done, we drop them a year apart. I call it a meta-narrative that runs across the three movies. Each film stands alone, but it also tells one much larger story.
“We have design more or less finished, which is an enormous task,” he added. “It’s been about a two-year task. [We’ve finished] all the creatures and the landscapes, and the new worlds within the world of Pandora that you see. The writing is ongoing, but almost finished. Technical development is done. Stages are done. Infrastructure. So we’re really poised to start after the first of the year.”
Either way, it’ll be yet another universe for moviegoers to wrap their heads around, what with Disney’s rejuvenated Star Wars, Marvel’s goliath and the DC Expanded Universe all occupying various portions of cinema’s ever-growing slate. This raises the billion dollar question of whether Avatar will be able to find an audience almost a decade after it brought the worldwide box office to its knees, but even if it doesn’t emulate the original, Cameron needs to cook up something special to maintain excitement across the entire trilogy.
If Avatar 2 does indeed nail down a Christmas 2017 release window, Avatar 3 and 4 will likely follow suit in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
