What’s going on, Jim?
There has been a great deal of talk about James Cameron’s increasingly ambitious expansion of the Avatar franchise; the director has regularly bumped up the number of sequels he plans to make to a point where he expects to create Avatar 2, 3, 4, and 5 all in one massive shoot. This talk has been going on for quite some years now, but the closest thing we’ve got to new Avatar content is a series of videos to promote the new Disney theme park, which will be based on the world of Pandora.
Given that it’s looking like this new Avatar theme park, set to open this Summer, is essentially one giant spoiler for what Cameron has planned for the movies, you’d think that the director would be eager to get the sequels onto the big screen. But, no.
In a new interview, Cameron has announced that the release of Avatar 2 has been pushed back yet again.
“Well, 2018 is not happening,” Cameron told the Toronto Star. “We haven’t announced a firm release date. What people have to understand is that this is a cadence of releases. So we’re not making Avatar 2, we’re making Avatar 2, 3, 4, and 5. It’s an epic undertaking. It’s not unlike building the Three Gorges dam.”
It was only two months ago that Cameron had revealed the scripts for his Avatar sequels were ready to go, so this latest delay seems a bit odd. In fact, the Christmas 2018 release date was being taken so seriously that it’s thought Disney had shifted the release of their Han Solo Star Wars movie to the Summer just to avoid a clash between the two. So, what’s the hold-up?
It’s likely that all the brouhaha surrounding the Disney Parks unveiling has consumed more of Cameron’s time than he was anticipating, but that’s not going to be any crumb of comfort for anybody who is waiting to see Pandora return to the big screen. It now looks like we’re a good few years away from any Avatar movie getting even close to a release in theaters, especially given how much post-production work is involved with this type of project.
Had everything gone according to Cameron’s original plan, Avatar 2 would have hit theaters in 2014, while Avatar 3 (what was originally meant to be the conclusion to the entire story) would have been released just a year later in 2015.
Will these movies ever get made? Watch this space, I guess.
