If there's one good thing you can say about the Avatar sequels, nobody can accuse them of being rushed into production. Quite the opposite, the movies keep getting pushed back. Guess what? After being given yet another release date in 2018, James Cameron now says that Avatar 2 will not be here by then. The issue, he says, is that he's not just making one movie right now. He's making four, and that takes time.
Well, 2018 is not happening. We haven't announced a firm release date. What people have to understand is that this is a cadence of releases. So we're not making Avatar 2. We're making Avatar 2, 3, 4 and 5. It's an epic undertaking. It's not unlike building the Three Gorges dam. (Laughs) So I know where I'm going to be for the next eight years of my life. It's not an unreasonable time frame if you think about it. It took us four-and-a-half years to make one movie and now we're making four. We're full tilt boogie right now. This is my day job, and pretty soon we'll be 24-7.
Based on James Cameron's comments to The Star, it sounds like the director is looking to make all of the Avatar sequels in one big mass. As such, he's going to need to have everything set to make four movies one right after the other, if not one on top of each other. It's not about figuring out what to do with Avatar 2, getting it done, and then moving on to Avatar 3. He apparently wants to be ready to film Avatar 5 before he starts production on Avatar 2.
None of this is at all surprising. For the longest time, the delay on the next Avatar movie was that James Cameron said he was having trouble with the script because writing all of the scripts so that they all fit together and told a coherent story was difficult. It's all the reason the number of sequels escalated so quickly. Now, that same issue has popped up when it comes to actually starting production.
At this point, if you're not questioning whether or not the Avatar sequels will ever happen then you're just not paying attention. James Cameron keeps raising his own bar and increasing the amount of work he needs to do over and over again. He's promised more than he could possibly deliver. The real question is, will these movies ever be officially canceled, or will they simply remain in development hell until James Cameron dies.
Fans of Avatar would likely be better served by booking a trip to Orlando and checking out the World of Pandora at Disney World that's set to open at the end of May. It's likely the only new Avatar fix you'll be getting anytime soon. Possibly forever.
Will we ever see Avatar 2 much less Avatar 5? We're taking bets in the comments below.
