UPDATE: It looks like the image below has managed to fool the internet. Deadline is reporting that the proposed Avatar 2 concept art comes from a fake Twitter account for producer Jon Landau - and that the filmmaker is currently in the midst of trying to get the account deleted.
The original report in its entirety is below:
It’s been almost six years since James Cameron’s groundbreaking sci-fi adventure Avatar became the biggest movie ever, and in that time, the talk of sequels has never abated. They’re still coming, three of them, and while production is a ways off, we do have a new look at what the Na’vi, the alien creatures from the film, will look like in Avatar 2, and from what we see, they look very familiar.
Jon Landau, a producer on Avatar as well as all three of the sequels, took to social media and shared this drawing of one of the Na’vi on Twitter. The image arrived on his timeline with the words, "Avatar 2," and nothing more.
The look of this character is not particularly surprising if you’ve seen Avatar or even just know what the Na’vi look like. They have blue skin, large eyes, and are vaguely feline in their facial features. That’s all information that we already knew and didn’t expect to change much in the sequels unless something drastic went down on the far away world of Pandora.
The real question surrounding this image is whether or not it is simply a piece of concept art someone worked on for Avatar 2—I guess it’s also possible Landau himself did this, I don’t know if he’s artistically inclined in that manner—or if this is of a new character that will actually be in the movie. It appears to be a female face, but it doesn’t look like either of the key actresses who are returning to this world.
Zoe Saldana is set to reprise her role as the Na’vi Neytiri, while Sigourney Weaver is coming back in some capacity—rumors say that she’ll once again play Dr. Grace Augustine, but that’s going to be tricky since she dies near the end. Still, Pandora has the Tree of Souls and other magical elements, so they can probably figure out a way to resurrect her if they put their minds to it. This image, however, doesn’t look like either of them, so we are left to wonder about its true nature.
Just in case you need a refresher, here’s what the Na’vi look like in Avatar.
Scheduled to shoot back-to-back-to-back, production on the Avatar sequels was pushed back by a year. Right now, unless there are further delays, filming will likely begin sometime early next year, and Avatar 2 will hit theaters December 25, 2017, Avatar 3 will be released in December of 2018, and Avatar 4 will follow in December 2019.
