With the premiere of “Avatar: The Way of Water” having taken place in London this week, those involved have been doing press for the past few days and talking up the first of four sequels to James Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi juggernaut.
As we know, a third “Avatar” has already been shot and is coming in 2024, a fourth has been partly shot, and a fifth is planned. Whether the fourth and fifth will be done will entirely depend on the success of the second and third films.
Cameron spoke with Collider this week about his writing process, which included having all the screenplays for the future films written before going into production on any of the films. Cameron cites Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy as his model:
“My model was what Peter Jackson did with The Lord of the Rings, which was a crazy bet in its time. And really hats off to that, that they took that chance to launch on all three of those films. But he had the books mapped out, so he could always show the actors what they needed to know about their character arc.
So I felt I had to do the same thing. I had to play this as if the books already existed. So the only way for us to do that was to write all the scripts and let the actors read all the scripts and see where their characters were going and what it all meant.”
As a result, it meant they were filming multiple sequels at the same time with them “shooting parts of 2, parts of 3, parts of 4 on any given day”. But having the scripts all done meant the actors could see where it was all going and remain motivated and enthused:
“The story’s a corker. By the time we get down to 4 and 5, if we’re so lucky, knock wood, to get that far, which is obviously driven by market forces, we have to be successful.
I can’t tell you the details, but all I can say is that when I turned in the script for 2, the studio gave me three pages of notes. And when I turned in the script for 3, they gave me a page of notes, so I was getting better.
When I turned in the script for 4, the studio executive, creative executive over the films wrote me an email that said, ‘Holy f—.’ And I said, ‘Well, where are the notes?’ And she said, ‘Those are the notes.’ Because it kind of goes nuts in a good way, right?
You think you know what it’s about, and then, oh no, you don’t. I hope I get to make that film, is what I’m saying.”
Should he get the go-ahead though, the fourth “Avatar” won’t be hitting cinemas until late 2026. Meanwhile, “Avatar: The Way of Water” comes to theaters on December 16th.
