Avatar 2 plot details revealed

James Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi movie Avatar is the most profitable film in history. With that kind o cache, it was never a matter of whether there would be sequels; it was a matter of when.

The when is now. Cameron is working on four Avatar sequels, none of which have official titles yet. Avatar 2 is due out on December 16 of 2022.

When last we left the world of Avatar, space marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) had gone native and entered into a relationship with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a native of the far planet of Pandora. Now, over a decade later, their growing family is threatened by a mining operation that forces them to move to the seaside and deal with a new clan known as the Metkayina.

“The Sullys are no longer in the environment that they know, the rainforest,” producer Jon Landau told Total Film. “They become the fish out of water. They become the fish out of water both culturally and just environmentally.”

"I think the story of Avatar 2, and the strength of the story, is what Jim [Cameron] always does in any of his movies: he writes in universal themes that are bigger than any one genre…And if you think about this, there’s really no more universal theme than family. At the center of each of our sequels is the Sully family. What are the dynamics that parents go through to protect their family?"

And of course, the ocean is at the center of the next two movies. Cameron has long been obsessed with the sea both on film (Titantic, The Abyss) and off, something he freely admits to Entertainment Weekly: “[I]f I could combine my two greatest loves — one of which is ocean exploration; the other, feature filmmaking — why wouldn’t I?”

Making the Avatar sequels is “a roll of the dice”

As for what comes after that, Landau would only reveal that the ideas are there. “The scripts are the blueprint from which we work,” he said. “So a large portion of our time was writing… with the challenge that each of those four scripts had to individually resolve itself in a story that concludes with a big emotional resolution – but when you look at them as a whole, the connected story arc of all four movies creates an even larger epic saga.”

"What we are doing now, from a story standpoint and a world standpoint, is on a much larger scale. That’s both exciting and challenging. We are putting much more detail, first and foremost, into the performances of the cast, but we’re [also] putting much more detail and diversity into the world that we are creating."

So Cameron and crew are going all out to make these Avatar sequels as good as possible, but the next question is whether anyone wants to see them. Avatar hasn’t been a big part of the culture since the original movie bowed over a decade ago, and Cameron freely admits that it’s a risk going this hard on the follow-ups. Or as he put it:

"The big issue is: Are we going to make any damn money? Big, expensive films have got to make a lot of money. We’re in a new world post-COVID, post-streaming. Maybe those [box office] numbers will never be seen again. Who knows? It’s all a big roll of the dice."

We’ll see what happens, starting next year.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels