James Cameron Diving Into AVATAR 2, 3 And 4 Next, Other Projects Backburnered

Well some good news and some bad news. The good news is James Cameron is back from his dive and while there is a 3D documentary coming out about it, he is hard at work on AVATAR 2 and 3. He's been writing. And filling in where he wants to take us, but he has stepped back from world building for the moment. As you can imagine, building worlds is a tough business to be in. Think about it for a minute: Pandora's environment, flora and fauna, cultures, language, the physics of this new world - unobtainium, floating mountains, etc. Time consuming to say the least!


So will we see another alien race or planet / moon in AVATAR 2 or 3? Looks like the answer is... maybe. I've listened to how some of my readers have interpreted his message and it is feasible that he intends on growing the AVATAR universe to other moons, etc. Cameron has pulled the plug on his development arm though. Let's hope it is ONLY new development.

The bad news is it looks like BATTLE ANGEL may be far in the future. Cameron is now saying he is totally in the AVATAR business (which IS great news) and that there may even be an AVATAR 4 before anything else. So all of you BA fans will have to wait longer (myself included). I am actually ok with this. There is so much he can do with the AVATAR universe that his mind must be racing.

Add in the fact that Ridley Scott looks like he has a diamond soon to be released in PROMETHEUS, Cameron is going to want to answer that movie with resounding: "Ok Ridley, top THIS one!"

So let's get to the quotes:

Cameron on other filmmakers:
"I don’t find my inspiration in movies. I find my inspiration in life – in the natural world, in daily life. There are filmmakers that come along that are quite iconoclastic. And that I’m in awe of, frankly. Zack Snyder’s “300.” I think that was a really revolutionary film, because it was a completely deconstructive form of filmmaking in a way that nobody had done before, other than maybe Robert Rodriguez. That’s inspirational to me. Zhang Yimou’s films are inspirational to me. I have to see them multiple times to really see how he’s doing it and what exactly he’s doing that seems to work so well. So as a fan of film, there are certain films that come along that are just stunning to me, and I’ll study them."

"...You know, there’s the old guard. You know, Spielberg, Kubrick and all that sort of thing. But in terms of new filmmakers, up and coming, I haven’t seen anybody that blew me away in the last year or so."

Cameron on his next projects:
"I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the “Avatar” business. Period. That’s it. I’m making “Avatar 2,” “Avatar 3,” maybe “Avatar 4,” and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts. And that all sounds I suppose a little bit restricted, but the point is I think within the “Avatar” landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it. And doing it in an entertaining way. And anything I can’t say in that area, I want to say through documentaries, which I’m continuing. I’ve done five documentaries in the last 10 years, and I’ll hopefully do a lot more. In fact, I’m doing one right now, which is on this, the Deep Sea Challenge project that we just completed the first expedition. So that’ll be a film that’ll get made this year and come out first quarter of next year."

"We’ve spent the last year and a half on software development and pipeline development. The virtual production methodology was extremely prototypical on the first film. As then, no one had ever done it before and we didn’t even know for two and half years into it and $100 million into it if it was going to work. So we just wanted to make our lives a whole lot easier so that we can spend a little more of our brainpower on creativity. It was a very, very uphill battle on the first film. So we’ve been mostly working on the tool set, the production pipeline, setting up the new stages in Los Angeles, setting up the new visual effects pipeline in New Zealand, that sort of thing. And, by the way, writing. We haven’t gotten to the design stage yet. That’ll be the next."

"It’s conceivable (on working in China for the AVATAR sequels). You know, one of the things I want to explore while I’m here is the idea of co-production on those films, but it’s a slightly different case because they’re studio films. There were zero… I can’t say zero exteriors. We did one night in the parking lot next to the sound stage. But there were no locations."

I'll have more when I get it, and when I hear back from my sources. Once work ramps up on the AVATAR sequels we'll have some cool updates guaranteed! :-)

Source: NYTimes