Sci-Fi Film and Television Developments

Avatar 2

4/21/10 - Director James Cameron told the LA Times that a planned follow-up to Avatar would head for the fictional planet's oceans.  "Part of my focus in the second film is in creating a different environment - a different setting within Pandora," he said. "And I'm going to be focusing on the ocean on Pandora, which will be equally rich and diverse and crazy and imaginative, but it just won't be a rain forest. I'm not saying we won't see what we've already seen; we'll see more of that as well."  He also hinted at space travel - and a potential third film.  "We created a broad canvas for the environment of film. That's not just on Pandora, but throughout the Alpha Centauri AB system," he said. "And we expand out across that system and incorporate more into the story - not necessarily in the second film, but more toward a third film.  The challenge will be on the next "Avatar" picture... to do what we did before at half the price and in half the time," he explained. "Again, that's an impossible goal, we won't accomplish that, but if we can reduce by 25 percent in both categories, we'll have really accomplished something."

1/14/10 - James Cameron plans sequels to his now-blockbuster Avatar, Entertainment Weekly reported.  The magazine quotes the director as saying he left scenes in the movie to set up a subsequent movie.  But not only did director James Cameron always believe that the film would be a hit—he was even planning a sequel during production. "I've had a storyline in mind from the start—there are even scenes in Avatar that I kept in because they lead to the sequel," Cameron says. "It just makes sense to think of it as a two or three film arc, in terms of the business plan."  It famously took Cameron 15 or more years to develop the tech and ideas for Avatar, but now that the infrastructure is in place, it won't take that long to mount a second movie, he added. And star Sam Worthington has already signed on for a sequel.  Cameron made clear that the next film won't be a prequel, recounting previous backstory, but will begin after the events of the initial movie. "We'll follow Jake and Neytiri," he confirmed.  In fact, Cameron intends to follow the couple for another two films. "I have a trilogy-scaled arc of story right now, but I haven't really put any serious work into writing a script," he said.

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