We may still be a year and a half out from the December 2025 release date for James Cameron's Avatar 3, but we're getting a little closer to returning to Pandora every day. The second movie in the series, Avatar: The Way of Water, was a smash hit that made billions at the global office. That made Zoe Saldaña, who has been playing the Na'vi warrior Neytiri since the first Avatar back in 2008, the only actor to have ever appeared in four films which have grossed over $2 billion at the box office, since she also played Gamora in Marvel's Avengers films.
"It never gets old, I'm pinching myself," Saldaña said about the realization that she had set this incredible record while on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. "I do believe that half of it was luck. Had I planned this, I don't think that the outcome would have been this way."
Work on Avatar 3 is "ongoing"
Saldaña was on The Tonight Show in order to promote her new movie The Absence of Eden, which examines the complexities of how illegal immigrants are treated in the United States, and marks her debut movie collaboration with her husband, director Marco Perego. But she also talked plenty about the long road of her career, from making her film debut in a Burger King commercial at the age of 19 to her record-setting successes of recent years. That includes talking about Avatar, where Saldaña was a good enough sport to give an update on the film and her part in it.
Fallon brought up Avatar 3 in relation to an image Saldaña posted to Instagram back in January, showing her in motion capture gear. Saldaña confirmed that she was back on set then for "pickups" for the third Avatar movie, which is a fairly normal part of the filmmaking process where actors come back in after principal photography has wrapped to fill in any last shots the team needs for the movie.
"We shot two and three, we started shooting in 2017 and... you know two already came out," Saldaña said. "And 3, it's an ongoing thing where will come back and he will continuously work on it. Because just the technology requires so much time."
It's been openly discussed at this point that Cameron and his team filmed the second and third Avatar movies back to back, leaving plenty of time for extensive post-production work. "He's a scientist, I'm telling you," Saldaña said about James Cameron. And while that sounds like a joke, it's not far off the truth; Cameron and his team had to invent new filming technologies in order to create the Avatar films.
"They called me back in January out of nowhere, and they're like 'We just have some pickup shots, can you please come in?'" Saldaña recalled, saying that she was told the scenes were "super no hassle, just close ups." But to her surprise upon arriving on set, she realized some of them involved riding her Ikran mount, which is a bit more involved. "I'm like 'are you kidding me? I haven't gone to the gym in like...' ." She explained how you have to squat on the Ikran, which was a bit of a challenge on that particular day of filming since she hadn't prepped for it. "Guys, I took a squat and couldn't get up," she said, laughing.
The whole interview is very much worth a watch if you've enjoyed Saldaña in the Avatar movies. She also talks a little about the Avatar ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida, which she has gone on.
Avatar 3 is slated for release in theaters on December 19, 2025.
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