James Cameron Announces 3 Avatar Sequels With Multiple Scriptwriters
As he is often one to do, James Cameron is back to making ridiculously lavish movie plans concerning the would-be Avatar franchise. Instead of being content with his nearly 2 billion haul from that film, one whose sequel seems unlikely to have the same draw, Cameron is now announcing that there will be three Avatar sequels, each of them being penned by different writers, with filming to begin next year as all three are shot simultaneously.
The first of the sequels would have a December 2016 release date, with each following a year later. Sounds like a good way to give yourself a heart attack Jim, but have at it.
20th Century Fox should probably also watch its cholesterol; this set of films is likely to be the most expensive of their kind, and Deadline, who broke the story, mentions the possibility that the three pictures could cost almost one billion dollars to produce.Although the gamble payed off with The Lord of the Rings for Peter Jackson, the bloated and stalled nature of the first Hobbit film suggests that Cameron should be cautious in how he proceeds.
As for the chosen writers? Josh Friedman, who wrote the script for Spielbergs War of the Worlds, will do one, Rick Jaff & Amanda Silver, who tackled Rise of the Planet of the Apes, are doing another, and Shane Salerno, who tried to get Fantastic Voyage together with Cameron, will be closing out the series. Each of the writers will work with Cameron separately and co-write their respective scripts with the director.
Cameron, in a statement, said this when revealing the writers, In writing the new films, Ive come to realize that Avatars world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen.
All of that money and award nominations probably prevent Jim from being remotely humble about his baby and certainly his film was a great success, but is he overestimating the appeal and power of Avatar to cover a total of four movies?
By 2016, will anyone still really care about the world of Pandora?