It’s been a long wait forAvatar 2, but we’re going to be in for an emotional ride in addition to a visual spectacle according to director James Cameron. Audiences have been waiting nearly a decade for Cameron to revisit the world of Pandora he first introduced us to in 2009. It took an awfully long time, but work is well underway on the next two sequels in what will ultimately be a five-movie franchise. Now, in his latest update, he’s promised that things will get emotional for Jake and Neytiri in the next movie.
James Cameronhas been out promoting his latest producorial effort,Alita: Battle Angel, which hit theaters over the weekend and, to the surprise of many analysts, managed to come out on top at the box office. During a recent interview, the filmmaker was asked aboutAvatar 2and he dove into a specific scene in the upcoming sequel that will center on Jake and Neytiri having an intense fight, seen from the perspective of one of their young children. Here’s what Cameron had to say about it.
“There’s a three-page argument scene betweenJake and Neytiri, a marital dispute, very, very critical to the storyline. Wound up shooting it all from the point of view of the eight year old hiding under the structure and peeking in […] Having gone through the experience with [Sam Worthington] on Avatar, I now knew how to write the Jake character going forward across the emotional rollercoaster of the next four movies. It’s been tough on him. He’s done two pictures back to back now, because we did 2 and 3 together. He had to go to some dark places.”
As James Cameron mentions, they’ve been mostly focusing onAvatar 2and3so far and theyrecently wrapped the performance capturefor those two movies. That’s the bulk of what is needed. However, there is still a lot of work to do. We recently learned that the production will head to New Zealand for the live-action scenes needed for the next two entries. Cameron, for his part, doesn’t sound terribly thrilled about it.
“[Performance-capture] is the vast majority of the characters, and that is the vast majority of the running time of the film but thatpesky little live-action componentis going to cost me five months of my life, across the two movies.”
By the time these movies actually hit theaters, Disney will be in control of the franchise. Depending on how the next two movies do, scripts are already written for the fourth and fifth movies. Considering that the original Avatar remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (by a considerable margin), that shouldn’t be an issue. As it stands,Avatar 2will hit theaters on June 25, 2025, with the other sequels set to follow on July 18, 2025, August 06, 2025, and July 25, 2025. This news was first reported byEmpire.
