Avatar sequel remains on track

Avatar hit theaters in late 2009 and became the biggest movie of all time, beating out James Cameron’s previous movie, Titanic. A sequel was obviously a given.

In fact, there’s supposed to be a full-blown Avatar trilogy, and Cameron has even talked about doing a prequel as well. 

 

Of course none of this is going to happen overnight, there’s still no official start date or release date for the next Avatar film, and we’ll probably see the JJ Abrams Star Wars come and go before we travel back to Pandora. Still, Cameron offered a recent update to Collider, and he’s still in writing mode.

As Cameron relates, “I was talking the other day with Peter Jackson and said, ‘You had it easy dude. You had the books when you did the second and third Lord of the Rings. I have to create my own books in my head and extract a script from it. I’m deep into it and I’m living in Pandora right now. There is that start up torque where you feel it’s coming to you. Then you build up momentum. That’s when it gets fun. The characters talk and it’s writing itself. I’m almost there right now. It’s building fast.”

Cameron added the release date for the second Avatar will be determined when he finishes the script. “It’s a little daunting because sequels are always tricky. You have to be surprising and stay ahead of audience anticipation. At the same time, you have to massage their feet with things that they know and love about the first film. I’ve walked that line in the past, so I’m not too worried about it. At the same time, I definitely have to deliver the goods.” 

You may think Cameron’s afraid of nothing, but like many of us who try to create, there’s nothing scarier than a blank page or a blank computer screen begging to be filled with something. 

In the published edition of the Terminator 2 screenplay, Cameron wrote that when Terminator 2 was finally coming together, “There remained no obstacles to writing the best damn sequel possible, except…Writing. My old bête noir. I hate writing. It is the most tedious, solitary, terrifying part of making a film. It is the moment when the creative die is cast, although it will take months, maybe years, and millions of dollars to find out if the throw was lucky or unlucky.”

So here’s hoping Cameron will finish up the script as fast possible to get the hardship of writing over, and get back to Pandora for the next Avatar blockbuster.