The Associated Press reports today from an event held by the New Zealand Screen Advisory Board where director James Cameron revealed that the release date of the upcoming Avatar 2 has been delayed from December 2016 to December 2017.
“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,” said Cameron.“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.”
Cameron revealed he still plans to shoot all three sequels simultaneously and release them a year apart.
“We were probably a bit ambitious with [the film],” Cameron added (via 3news). “It took me six months to write the first and we’re writing three altogether.”
Set to feature the return of cast members Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver, Avatar 2, 3, and 4 will be produced by Cameron and Jon Landau through their Lightstorm Entertainment. The sequels are currently being written by Cameron along with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, and Shane Salerno. The original 2009 film is the top grossing movie of all time with $2.782 billion at the worldwide box office.
