Avatar: The Last Airbender – the much-anticipated sequel to the 2009 sci-fi hit – hits theaters on December 16 and is expected to attract moviegoers to theaters like flies to honey.
However, screenwriter and director James Cameron is already opening the door to potential sequels.
It’s no secret that for the past 13 years he’s been working simultaneously on The Nature of Water and the upcoming Avatar 3, Avatar 4 and Avatar 5. The scripts for the third and fourth films are actually finished because Cameron wrote them along with the one for the second.
Moreover, according to the screenwriter and director, the script of “Avatar 4” was really well received by the bosses of the film studio (the series is already under the umbrella of “Disney”), who did not want any changes to it.
“I can’t tell you the details, but what I can say is that when I turned in the script for the second movie, the studio gave me back three pages of notes,” Cameron told Collider.
“When I gave them the script for the third one, they gave me a page of notes, so obviously I was fine. When I gave them the script for the fourth movie, the studio rep who was in charge of the movies sent me an email that said, ‘Fuck.’ And I I said, “Okay, where are the notes?” And she said, “There are no notes,” the director points out.
According to him, the reason is that “Avatar 4” goes in a “crazy direction”, but in a good way. He describes it as a film where “you think you know what it’s about, and the next moment, oh no, you don’t”.
Cameron obviously has a lot more to say, but whether we’ll see Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 is still in question, according to him.
What Cameron means by these praises is that he really wishes he had the opportunity to make the fourth film.
Yes, he wants to, as it is not at all certain at the moment. Regardless of whether it is a promotional tactic to attract more viewers to the theaters, but the director has already commented on several occasions that he will only be able to tell the entire planned story if the second and third films are successful.
I.e. while planned, Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 may not become a reality if the stories that preceded them about the planet Pandora and its blue-skinned inhabitants do not live up to box office expectations.
At the moment, one thing is certain – “Avatar 3” is already completely filmed and is expected in theaters in December 2024.
A third of the fourth film has also been shot, although, as we said, its release depends on the success of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar 3. If they raise enough money, Avatar 4 will hit screens in 2026.
This bold approach to look so far into the future is undoubtedly due to the financial success of the first film from 2009, which is still the highest-grossing in the history of cinema. However, Cameron finds inspiration elsewhere.
“Model [за подражание] to me was what Peter Jackson did with The Lord of the Rings, which was a crazy bet at the time,” says Cameron, adding that he takes his hat off to his co-star. He’s referring to Jackson writing the screenplays for all three films in the trilogy based on JRR Tolkien’s book.
“He[ed. Jackson]had a plan on the books, so he could always show the actors what they needed to know about their character’s arc. I felt I had to do the same. They had to play it as if.” the books “already exist,” Cameron explains.
The only way to do this was to write all the scripts so the actors could see where their characters were headed.
This knowledge of the future, of course, should not have affected their performance, but according to the director, it helped the actors in their preparation for the roles.
The idea of writing the scripts of 4 sequels came from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.
Once the scripts were ready, the difficult task was to shoot three films simultaneously. Large parts of each were shot, not necessarily in the order of the sequels. The crew knew they could shoot scenes from the second, third and fourth films on any given day.
“It’s a challenge, but it’s no more challenging than, say, working on a limited series and you have a home set that’s going to appear in every one of the six hours. It’s no different,” says the director.
According to him, the mixed shooting also helped the actors to see where the story was going to keep their enthusiasm.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is written by Cameron, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who also wrote Jurassic World, the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy and the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
Josh Friedman (2005’s War of the Worlds) and Shane Salerno (2012’s Savages) also helped with the story.
Avatar: The Last Airbender opens in theaters on December 16.
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