The first Avatar sequel has been delayed until late 2017. Director James Cameron announced the change on Wednesday, January 14, saying that writing the three sequels is “such a complex job” that the film will be delayed a year. He said that the original late 2016 release date was “probably too ambitious.”
Cameron said, “There’s a layer of complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films that you don’t get when you’re making a stand-alone film.”
The sequels are all being filmed at the same time in New Zealand and one will be released each year for three years. The goal is for Cameron and his writing team to have all three scripts completed this month.
“We’re writing three simultaneously. And we’ve done that so that everything tracks throughout the three films. We’re not just going to do one and then make up another one and another one after that. And parallel with that, we’re doing all the design. So we’ve designed all the creatures and the environments,” he said.
He wants each film to flow into the next one, but for each individual film to also have a resolution so audiences weren’t left wondering what was going on.
The original Avatar film was released in 2009 and is the highest-grossing film of all time, earning almost $2.8 billion at the box office. In addition to that honor, Avatar won a Golden Globe for Best Drama and Academy Awards for Cinematography, Visual Effects and Art Direction.
A land based on the films is being created at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and is expected to open in 2017.
News and photo source: Yahoo! Movies
