Not really surprising news, but it looks like director James Cameron has confirmed that there will be a sequel to his mega hit Avatar. With the movie already surpassing The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King to become the second highest grossing movie EVER at over $1.3 billion, 20th Century Fox would have to be stupid AND insane not not want to milk this cow at least a little more.
Harry at Ain’t It Cool News got the tip from someone calling themselves Marcel who attended an Avatar screening and Q&A with Cameron himself. Here’s what he had to say:
Don’t know if this is newsworthy, but I just saw a Variety Screening Series showing of Avatar at the Arclight theater in Hollywood tonight, followed with a Q&A with James Cameron and two of his visual effects artists. One of the artists mentioned that they’ll never again do this for the first time, meaning that everything they did in the making of Avatar was just a lot of instinctive grasping in the dark. Cameron agreed with him. He also told him to expect the studio to want another one, as they’d passed the billion $ mark. A second film will be easier, as the technology now exists, thanks to the movie. The moderator asked if there *would* be an Avatar sequel. To which Cameron answered that the plan had always been to make a trilogy of films. Finally, Cameron actually said it: “Yes, there’ll be another.”
We already talked about what Cameron possibly has in mind for the sequel and potential trilogy, so this thing could happen quickly if Cameron wants it to. The only reason we may get the movie later rather than sooner is that he has a couple other projects in mind, including one based on the book “The Last Train From Hiroshima” that he recently optioned. With enough studio pressure though (which is sure to come), I’m sure we’ll be seeing Avatar 2: Electric Boogaloo soon enough.