James Cameron on 'Avatar' Sequels

Here is some more to read, but this time it's directly coming from James Cameron himself. In this recent Reddit AMA in support of his new Showtime docu-series Years of Living Dangerously, Cameron discussed about the status of his Avatar sequels and also his thoughts on Prometheus, Terminator reboot, the status of Alien 5 and Battle Angel.

Here is some of the more interesting highlights below. Thanks to Collider.

Avatar Sequels:

James Cameron: The second, third and fourth films all go into production simultaneously. They're essentially all in preproduction now, because we are designing creatures, settings, and characters that span all three films. And we should be finished with all three scripts within the next, I would say, six weeks.

Decision on making more Avatar films: 

James Cameron: My intention when I made Avatar was to do Battle Angel next. However, the positive feedback for Avatar and the support of the message of Avatar, encouraged me to do more of those films.

For me, the success was a factor because I was encouraged by the fact that an environmental film, or a film about nature, could be successful. It’s certainly not just about money. I'm considering success to mean the measure of the ability of the film to communicate. Every director wants their film to communicate. The biggest factor, however, is the drive to continue developing the world - more characters, more creatures with unfettered creativity.

Making of Avatar and its editing process: 

James Cameron: When we were making Avatar, when we started it, we naturally assumed it would be somewhat successful because it had the elements people like, you know, fantastic environments and good characters and a love story. But then as we got deeper into the production, and it became one of the highest costing films of all time, there was genuine concern that it would never break even, that it would never make money. And we had a very difficult post production, because the film was too long and I wound up editing the film for over a year, and we took out about 45 minutes of film. And I think at the moment we released the film, we still believed it was too long. Once it came out, it was clear the film for most viewers was too short, they wanted more of that world.