Avatar: The Way of Water director James Cameron has revealed that the upcoming sequel is even "more ambitious" than its predecessor, 2009's Avatar.
"Certainly, water is much more difficult to realize in CG," he said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "And our water is mostly CG water, but you won't be able to tell. It looks photo-real. It looks like we just went out to the ocean in Pandora and shot it." The upcoming epic science-fiction film is expected to feature numerous underwater scenes due to the inclusion of a new Na'vi clan, the Metkayina, in the film, who are located on Pandora's reefs.
The Way of Water was first announced in 2010 following the massive commercial success of the original 2009 film. While Cameron initially stated that he hoped to have the sequel in theaters in 2014, the film was repeatedly delayed to allow for the development of new technology that could film performance capture scenes underwater, among other things. While plot details remain scarce, the sequel has been confirmed to pick up a decade after the events of the original film and will focus on the Sully family, which includes Jake and Neytiri's adoptive teenage daughter Kiri, played by Sigourney Weaver.
Avatar's Sequels Will Be as Big as Lord of the Rings
Following The Way of Water, Cameron has three more sequels planned for the Avatar franchise. The acclaimed director has previously stated that his goal for Avatar is to make it as big as The Lord of the Rings franchise. "What I said to the [20th Century] Fox regime at the time was, 'I'll do it, but we’ve got to play a larger game here. I don’t want to just do a movie and do a movie and do a movie. I want to tell a bigger story,'" he said. "I said, 'Imagine a series of novels like The Lord Of The Rings existed, and we're adapting them.' Now, that was great in theory, but then I had to go create the frickin’ novels from which to adapt it."
Unfortunately for Cameron, that was easier said than done as he later revealed that he almost fired the sequels' writers. The director recalled how after he had assembled a writers' room for the four sequels, he wanted the writers to figure out "what worked on the first film, what connected, and why it worked." However, the writers reportedly kept bringing up new ideas for the sequels, which Cameron didn't want to hear at the time. "Eventually I had to threaten to fire them all because they were doing what writers do, which is to try and create new stories," he said in Sept. 2022. "I said, 'We need to understand what the connection was and protect it, protect that ember and that flame.'"
The first of the four sequels, Avatar: The Way of Water, opens in theaters on Dec. 16.
Source: Entertainment Weekly