James Cameron to make three 'Avatar' sequels simultaneously
NEW YORK – If you can't get enough “Avatar”, then break out the unobtainium: this is your lucky day. Sigourney Weaver has confirmed that director James Cameron is planning to film no less than three sequels to the blockbuster – at the same time.
Fox
Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana as they appear on Pandora in 'Avatar'
The veteran actor, who was at New York City's Morgan Library last night for the premiere of her upcoming TV miniseries
Political Animals, revealed to
Showbiz 411 that she was going to be in all of the record-breaking 2009 movie's three sequels, all of which will begin shooting in the fall.
“I'll just show up,” she told the entertainment-news website.
In May, Cameron said that he'd dissolved his production company's development department last year, so that he could focus solely on
Avatar sequels. “I’m in the
Avatar business. Period. That’s it,” he told the
New York Times. “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,” he added, “but... within the
Avatar landscape, I can say everything I need to say... 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.”
Cameron also told
Reuters in April that he was
seriously considering filming the sequels in China. And in March 2011, Cameron stated at CinemaCon in Las Vegas that he intended to shoot the
Avatar sequels at a frame rate higher than the standard 24 frames per second – even considering 48 and 60 frames per second – according to
The Hollywood Reporter.
Set in the 22nd century,
Avatar stars Sam Worthington as a paraplegic ex-soldier, Jake, one of a group of Earthling explorers sent to Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system populated by a species of tall, blue, humanoid creatures called Na'vi. Jake and others use artificial Na'vi “avatar” bodies to roam the moon. When the explorers attempt to mine and colonize the planet, Jake fights on the Na'vi side against the humans after falling in love with one of the aliens, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana).
Cameron has stated that any sequel or sequels would continue to follow Jake's and Neytiri's adventures. “It would be a continuation of their story,” he told
MTV in 2010, while
Avatar was still screening widely in theatres, “and I expect that those nasty humans didn't go away forever: 'Oh, well, that didn't work!'”
Producer Jon Landau told the London (U.K.) edition of
Metro in January that
Avatar 2 would be released in 2016.
Avatar was the first movie to gross more than $2 billion. It won three Academy Awards, for cinematography, art direction and visual effects.
