Three-time Academy Award winner James Cameron, who’s the proud owner of not only the highest grossing film worldwide, Avatar ($2.78B), but the second as well, Titanic ($2.18B), has played a significant role in shaping the cinematic landscape since 1984, which saw the release of his sophomore feature, The Terminator.
Two years later, the Canadian filmmaker followed up his sci-fi masterstroke with another, Aliens, a sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979, genre-defining space epic. Although extremely preoccupied with the writing and development of his Avatar universe at the moment, which he’s been working on since 2009, Cameron took some time out of his busy schedule to share previously unseen sketches from both of the aforementioned movies.
The director, a gifted artist no doubt, is responsible for the designs of both the T-800 – which he sketched from a particularly vivid nightmare – and the Alien Queen. In the new book James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, which ties into the new AMC miniseries of the same name, fans can behold never before seen sketches of his most recognizable works – two of which you can see in the gallery below.
With Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 currently filming, and a fourth and fifth sequel possibly on the way, should the original trilogy conclude on a high note, we won’t see a wholly original idea from Cameron for quite some time, with Avatar 5 slated for a release in 2025 at the earliest.
However, the rights of the Terminator series recently reverted back to James, leading him to spearhead a potential new trilogy starting with Tim Miller’s currently untitled reboot. In the meantime, he’s also producing Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel, which he also co-wrote and is based on the cult manga of the same name.
Unarguably, there isn’t a harder working man in cinema right now and we can’t wait to see what James Cameron gives us next.
