Hey, it’s not easy to write three “Avatar” sequels. At once. That’s what director James Cameron says.
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The writer/director announced Wednesday that his upcoming much-anticipated “Avatar” follow-ups have become such a complex writing job that he’s pushing the release date of the first new film from 2016 to 2017.
“We were probably a bit ambitious with [the film],” Cameron said, reports 3News. “It took me six months to write the first and we’re writing three altogether.”
Cameron plans to film the sequels one time and release them over consecutive years. He candidly – and earthily – touted the films in an Empire magazine interview last year.
James Cameron: The “Avatar” sequels are going to be awesome
But in Wellington, New Zealand on Wednesday, as he was helping promote the local film industry, he admitted,“There’s a layer of complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films that you don’t get when you’re making a stand-alone film.” And that’s why he’s pushing back the date.
Cameron is leading a team of screenwriters on the work, and he said the goal was to have the scripts for the three movies completed by the end of this month. He plans to shoot the films in New Zealand.
“We’re writing three simultaneously. And we’ve done that so that everything tracks throughout the three films. We’re not just going to do one and then make up another one and another one after that,” he said. “And parallel with that, we’re doing all the design. So we’ve designed all the creatures and the environments.”
Cameron said he wants each film to link to the next one, but also come to a resolution so that the audiences aren’t hanging.
The original “Avatar,” released in 2009, became the highest-grossing film in history, with a box office take of nearly $2.8 billion. It won three Oscars.
