James Cameron's Avatar was released in 2009, and the series is planned to run all the way up to Avatar 5 in 2031 (with further installments not out of the question). For the legendary filmmaker, taking on Avatar has become his magnum opus journey. Up next is Avatar: Fire and Ash, releasing in theaters on December 19.
Avatar: Fire and Ash reunites the core cast of Sam Worthington (Jake Sully), Zoe Saldaña (Neytiri), and Andrew Lang (Miles Quaritch). The threequel also sees the return of Sigourney Weaver's Kiri and Kate Winslet's Ronal. As the title suggests, we'll be introduced to the all-new Ash Clan of Pandora, led by the oppressive Varang (Oona Chaplin).
Despite decades of work, Avatar 3 is still far from the end of the saga. Cameron has been hyper-focused on making these movies, so much so that there's not been much space to pursue other projects.
"It was sort of: Do the Avatar saga or follow my interests more. I knew that Avatar would be all-consuming, and it has been," he said in a recent interview with AP News.
"When I set down that path, a reasonable projection was eight to 10 years to get it all written and do movie two and movie three together and get them out. But it’s actually turned out to be more than that," Cameron added. "It was a major commitment and decision to make for me as a life choice. But the Avatar movies reach people and they reach people with positive messaging. Not just positive about the environment but positive from the standpoint of humanity, empathy, spirituality, our connection to each other. And they’re beautiful."
Looking ahead to Avatar 3, he teased a shift in dynamic. "We as the audience take the Na’vi’s side. So they seem a kind of aspirational, better version of us. In a sense, it’s still empowering and reinforcing certain values and ethics and morals," he explains. However, Fire and Ash introduces a new clan, where, "we show Na’vi who have kind of fallen from grace and are adversarial with other Na’vi."
In addition, Cameron explained how the idea for Avatar came to him in a dream as a teenager.
"I was 19. I was in college and I had a very vivid dream of a bioluminescent forest with glowing moss that reacted to your feet and these little spinning lizards that floated around," he said. "It’s all in the movie, by the way. The reason it’s in the movie is because I got up and painted it. That later became the inspiration, just a few years later, for a science-fiction script. I said, 'Hey I got this idea for a planet where everything glows at night.' We wrote that in and it never went away."
Avatar aside, Cameron has set his eyes on other projects, and one is a big one for fantasy fans. His company, Lightstorm, has purchased the rights to Joe Abercrombie's latest novel, The Devils. Abercrombie will co-write a movie script with Cameron. There aren't too many details about it yet, but we've got a rundown of the news here.