Everything We Know About the Avatar Sequels So Far
Avatar was the highest-grossing movie of all time up until Avengers: Endgame has been released this year. It held the title for 10 years before Marvel’s top rating movie beat its $2,789 billion in worldwide sales by just $10 million.
With Avatar sequels coming soon, Avengers is not going to hold on to the record for a long time. Not for a decade as the original 2009 Avatar did.
Why Did It Take So Long?
Most movie franchises don’t wait for 10 years to capitalize on a box office success. A high-grossing movie means a successful sequel, and if there is one thing companies like Disney and Warner Brothers care about, it is money.
Why then it took James Cameron more than 10 years to produce a sequel? Because he’s a perfectionist. Avatar 2 was originally announced for 2015, and the deadline has been extended several times since then.
Cameron is not a guy who’d release a half-baked movie just to capitalize on the original film’s success. He cares about the story more than he does about money. He spent all these years perfecting the technology needed to make Avatar sequels look amazing. Some of that technology was used in Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel that Cameron co-produced.
The Release Dates
James Cameron has already released the dates for all four sequels. Avatar 2 is coming out in 2020, Avatar 3 is scheduled for 2021, Avatar 4 for 2024, and Avatar 5 finishes the series in 2025. All movies will be released in late December to capitalize on Christmas ticket sales.
As it often is the case with Cameron, the release dates are not set in stone. After all, he has been pushing back the release date for Avatar 2 for five years. He stated that if Avatar 2 and 3 blop in the box office, there will be no further movies.
Avatar 2 poses a threat to another great movie coming out in December 2020, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation. The two will compete in the box office, and it’s easy to see Avatar is winning the battle. Young audiences are more likely to choose Cameron’s sequel than a film adaptation of the book many of them haven’t even read.
The Budget
Each movie Cameron plans to produce is expected to cost $250 million, making the overall budget a whopping $1 billion. It may seem huge, but you have to put it into perspective. The original movie’s budget was also about $250 million, $285 million adjusted for inflation, but it grossed almost $3 billion in sales.
If the sequels gross even a quarter of that, the whole thing is going to be a financial success. This is why Cameron can afford to miss the budget by several dozen million and still make it work.
The Cast
The legendary director is bringing a lot of the cast back, as well as resuming his work with some star actors from his past. But let’s take a look at the screenwriters that work on the project. They’re often overlooked, but it’s the decision to hire professional writers that makes the difference between a good and bad movie.
Cameron hired Shane Salerno, known for his work on Aliens vs. Predators and 2013 Salinger biopic, to co-write all three movies with him. Josh Friedman, the screenwriter of War of the Worlds, Black Dahila, and the last installment of Terminator franchise, is going to work on the second movie. Avatar 3 is going to be handled by the screenwriting couple Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who gave us the Planet of the Apes franchise.
Many of the actors of the original movie are going to be back for their roles under this screenwriter ensemble. Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Giovanni Ribisi, and CCH Pounder are returning to play their original characters once again. Stephen Lang, whose character died in 2009 Avatar, is going to play a new role in the movie.
There’s also a lot of new actors coming. We’ll see Oona Chaplin known for a minor role in Games of Thrones and a more prominent one in Taboo, Fear The Walking Dead start Cliff Curtis, and David Thewlis. You’ll recognize David from the Harry Potter franchise, or 2014 Fargo if you love Netflix more than Joanne Rowling.
The start that is new to Avatar, but certainly not new to James Cameron, is Kate Winslet. It’s amazing what Cameron will be able to do with her talent.
The Plot
Very little is known about the plot. And that makes perfect sense – James Cameron is being super secretive not to spoil the surprise. What we do know is the names of the upcoming movies.
From 2 to 5, the movies may be named The Way of the Water, The Seed Bearer, The Tulkun Rider, and The Quest for Eywa. These names are not confirmed and may change later on, though.
Cameron’s grand plan for the movies is a bold change of setting. Instead of using the alien rainforest, we’ll see Pandora’s ocean. According to the director, it’s going to be as fantastic as exploring the rainforest.
However, shooting ocean scenes is a huge challenge. Every ocean movie is made in the shadow of the failed Waterworld. That ambitious movie that used to be the most expensive in its time bloated the budget precisely because shooting on the water is a hell of a trouble.
Avatar sequels are more about CGI than about building movie sets from scratch. However, James Cameron is planning to use motion capture underwater. It’s a technical challenge in and of itself, but there’s one more problem with Cameron’s water world. The reflective surface of the water is hard to use CGI with. But given the 10 years he’s spent working on the movie, we believe the director will overcome the challenge.
The last thing we know about the movies is that Cameron envisions them as a “generational family saga.” Perhaps, this is why it’s scheduled to be released at Christmas. Each movie is going to be a different story, though. For all we know, it may not have a strong connection to the original Avatar at all.
In one of his interviews, Cameron compared the upcoming movies to The Godfather. When a man who knows a thing or two about cinema makes such a connection, we can only hold our breath and wait to see just what he means.
Wrap Up
We know quite a lot about the Avatar sequels. We know the release dates, the budget, the cast, and the crew. The only thing we don’t know is the plot. It’s Cameron’s secret, and he’s not going to spill any information about it until the trailer drops. Given the release date for Avatar 2, we may see the trailer very soon.
*Collaboration Post with Florence Thompson*
