James Cameron Says ‘Avatar 2’ Has Been Delayed Until 2017
Not long ago, we wondered aloud why James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ had been largely forgotten about only five years later, despite being the biggest movie of all-time. It doesn’t even seem like there is a lot of anticipation for ‘Avatar 2’, which Cameron is developing concurrently with Parts 3 & 4. Well, people will suddenly have a little more time to start getting excited for an ‘Avatar 2’, because Cameron announced today that the upcoming sequel has been pushed back a full year, to December 2017.
Back in August of 2013, it was announced that ‘Avatar 2’ would open in theaters on December 25, 2016, with two additional sequels opening that same day in 2017 and 2018. It seemed ambitious at the time, getting three scripts ready for shooting back-to-back-to-back, and even Cameron now is admitting it might have been a little too ambitious.
The director was in New Zealand to promote the local film industry and announced his decision, saying, “There’s a layer of complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films that you don’t get when you’re making a stand-alone film.”
His new plan is to have the three screenplays—from a group of writers that includes Josh Friedman, Shane Salerno, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver—completed at the end of this month.
Cameron has previously said that the plot of the new trilogy is “really the story of [Jake Sully's] family, the family that he creates on Pandora. His extended family. So think of it as a family saga like ‘The Godfather.’” So, ‘Avatar 2’ will be like the ‘Godfather’. Oh and, it will make you “shit yourself”.
In its new release date, ‘Avatar 2’ will go head-to-head with that other massive sci-fi franchise and ‘Star Wars: Episode 8’.