In a fascinating interview with the New York Times, in which King of the World James Cameron talks about Chinese filmmakers and censorship, he also drops some interesting information about his future films. Not only does he mention Avatar 2, Avatar 3 and Avatar 4, but he says that is all he wants to make. Warning: this might leave people hanging out for Battle Angel somewhat upset.
In the interview with NYT’s Edward Wong, he is asked about the scripts and subject matter that he is currently working on. His response may be somewhat surprising:
I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the Avatar business. Period. That’s it. I’m making Avatar 2, Avatar 3, maybe Avatar 4, and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts. And that all sounds I suppose a little bit restricted, but the point is I think within the Avatar landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it. And doing it in an entertaining way. And anything I can’t say in that area, I want to say through documentaries, which I’m continuing. I’ve done five documentaries in the last 10 years, and I’ll hopefully do a lot more. In fact, I’m doing one right now, which is on this, the Deep Sea Challenge project that we just completed the first expedition. So that’ll be a film that’ll get made this year and come out first quarter of next year.
Later in the interview, he gives an update on where he is with the sequel, which is not up to the design stage yet. This would be consistent with not expecting the next film until 2014.
We’ve spent the last year and a half on software development and pipeline development. The virtual production methodology was extremely prototypical on the first film. As then, no one had ever done it before and we didn’t even know for two and half years into it and $100 million into it if it was going to work. So we just wanted to make our lives a whole lot easier so that we can spend a little more of our brainpower on creativity. It was a very, very uphill battle on the first film. So we’ve been mostly working on the tool set, the production pipeline, setting up the new stages in Los Angeles, setting up the new visual effects pipeline in New Zealand, that sort of thing. And, by the way, writing. We haven’t gotten to the design stage yet. That’ll be the next.
With construction set to begin on the Avatar attraction at Walt Disney World next year, it sounds like it will be an Avatar world for some time to come.
To read the full interview, which is really interesting, head over to the New York Times.
I can only hope that IF any more Avatar movies happen, that they can at least have decent stories. Unlike the original drivel. Eye-candy is the only thing it had going for it.