A few months back, film and TV sets around the world shut down on account of the coronavirus, with no set date for when production would start back up again. But with cases in some parts of the world beginning to stabilize, some countries have decided to open back up for business, including New Zealand.
Beautiful as it is, New Zealand has long been a popular spot for filming locations, perhaps most famously with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies. It’s also where Amazon is shooting its upcoming Lord of the Rings series, and James Cameron set up shop there to shoot the sequel to the phenomenally successful Avatar, aka that one movie with the blue aliens.
Now, Avatar 2 producer Jon Landau has announced on his Instagram that filming is indeed starting up again, beginning next week:
"Our #Avatar sets are ready — and we couldn’t be more excited to be headed back to New Zealand next week. Check out the Matador, a high speed forward command vessel (bottom) and the Picador jetboat (top) — can’t wait to share more."
The original Avatar saw soldier Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) use a machine to inhabit the body of a Na’vi alien on the planet of Pandora, embedding himself in their way of life. The idea was for him to be a kind of ambassador for the human beings trying to mine the planet for resources, but by the end of the film he’d gone native. Avatar 2 (and a couple more sequels to follow) will continue his journey. “This is the story of the Sully family and what one does to keep their family together,” Landau told Radio New Zealand. “Jake and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have a family in this movie, they are forced to leave their home, they go out and explore the different regions of Pandora, including spending quite a bit of time on the water, around the water, in the water.”
But the story of Avatar isn’t really what’s important here. What matters is that if a major movie like Avatar is starting up production, other films and TV shows probably won’t be far behind. Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show is an obvious candidate, but it likely won’t be long before other sets the world over begin creaking back to life.
And that’s good and bad. It’s good because we all want to see new stuff — there’s only so many things to watch on Netflix — but potentially bad because if everyone goes back to work too soon, it risks more people getting the virus, which could lead to another outbreak, which could lead to another shutdown, and on and on until we don’t get to see Avatar 2 until 2025.
Obviously, no one wants that to happen. Here’s hoping that if the film industry does get back to work, everyone remains as safe as possible.
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h/t SyFy Wire